


Glio Prime

by Saucy_Beans (QuillHeart)



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: And then Porn Ensued to Prove the Hypothesis, As did an absolutely ridiculous amount of star metaphors and stellar science, Bathroom Sex, Blow Jobs, Burnish Culture, Character Study, Dirty Talk, Feel-good, Gen, Hand Jobs, Hold My Drink I Tried to Fill in the Science, It's all very wholesome somehow though, Kissing, Light BDSM, Light Lio Whump, Lio Fotia Still Has Powers, Lio Fotia's Nuclear Orgasms, M/M, My First Work in This Fandom, PROMARE SCIENCE, Porn With Plot, Post-Canon, Power Bottom Lio Fotia, Power Play, Sex to the Rescue, Swearing, Top Galo Thymos, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:54:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21852535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuillHeart/pseuds/Saucy_Beans
Summary: Lio's sex drive has kicked into high gear thanks to a certain hunky firefighter in his orbit and his Promare doesn't know how to handle it. Fiery chaos and steamy smut ensues. (Includes some discussion about the Promare, too.)
Relationships: Lio Fotia/Galo Thymos
Comments: 70
Kudos: 431





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! If you have any Promare doujins, please email them to me! I'd love to translate them for you. I'm working on my translation ability and it seems like a perfect project. See the email address at the notes at the end of the chapter. 
> 
> NOTE: The first chapter is basically a treatise fleshing out the world and Promare mechanics and setting the stage for the rest of the fic. Galo shows up in chapter two like the Adonis statue he is, and the full-on steamy smut's in chapter three. Pick and choose if you'd like.
> 
> As for this fic itself...I just. I would like to apologize to the Academy. Honestly I don't know if I'm more embarrassed by the amount of science in my porn or the amount of porn in my science. Help.
> 
> Edit: In case it bugs anyone, "the Promare" refers either to a single one, or the colony of them collectively. "The Promares" refers to a group of them bouncing around together with individual self-ownership, but in a smaller number than the entirety of the species.

Lio is the nexus of his people, the defacto leader of the band of Burnish he and his freedom fighters have collected.

Outsiders assume this is because loyalty is easy to create when one’s very life is a debt to be repaid. Others note his presence, a mix of otherworldly beauty and determination that swirl together into a package not charming so much as coldly magnetic. He’s the shield his people need and has the power to hold back the coming storm—or create it. He hits all the points of leadership: wise, intimidating, charismatic. Even empathetic, when the moment allows it.

But there is something more at play, that the Burnish are not keen to discuss with outsiders. Or even themselves.

No, there is something only the initiated know, a knowledge held by those who have been hosts to the fire for a particularly long time or those who have had the misfortune to run afoul of particularly powerful, and unscrupulous, fellow Burnish in the wastelands.

It is a fact that whispers along the lips of those that know him, that rings through their souls when he draws near. And that is that he is the Prime Star of their galaxy.

 _Prime,_ as in the way black holes are named. Because, after all, black holes are the strongest stars there are. They absorb every bit of energy around them and disperse the rest, condensing the captured material to the hottest, densest, most singular point that can ever exist. The unneeded mass and energy is bent, flung away, and superheated into the darkness of the universe to form new stars and planets or crush the fragile life that already exists among them.

He is their Prime Star. And he burns so insanely bright that he knows he must live a life apart from them. Ever surrounded by orbiting bodies, but never touched—not unless they want to be ripped apart.

Lio has been a Burnish long enough that he knows perfectly well how to control the flames in order to live a normal life, should that have been an option available to him. Promares are symbiots living inside of human beings on some quantum level; they attach to the electromagnetic situation of the soul and live there, deep in the energetic wellspring of the heart chakra for most people. There are some Burnish who have them somewhere else, and they are a queer and fancy group to be sure. Lio can move his around, when he needs extra power in an eddy around his body. Mostly it just sits in his chest though, lightly thrumming to the song of his soul and furnishing him with a pleasantly warm, full feeling, only burning bright and manifesting into material existence when called upon.

The thing that makes Promares a problem for humanity, though, is that sometimes they act when _not_ called upon, and this is because they are stoked into an excited energy state when their people experienced particularly strong emotions. Anger—and more realistically, rage and jealousy—was of course the main set of emotions that would run away with people and their Promare, but grief would do it too. Tragedy, pain, horror, and for some, fear. Fear didn’t make Lio’s flames run; they made them throttle and choke, so it was a good thing he wasn’t afraid of much. However, given his experience with it, he figured it was tied to people’s flight or fight responses.

Unfortunately—and this was where the problem was—some people who were particularly in tune with their Promare ended up with the little alien being trying to protect its host (and thereby, itself) unconsciously, which was where the explosions came from. Connected to people’s unconscious minds, when such a mind spun out of control, unable to protect itself from the emotions it was feeling, the Promare spit off raging flames either as release valves for the extra energy, or as defense mechanisms to offer a sense of protection.

He’d seen more than his fair share of domestic violence-into-Burnish situations. It was, in fact, the number one type of Freeze Force First-Time Retrieval incident, according to their secret records.

For most, this mental breakdown was so extreme that the Promare inside them burned too bright, burned away its connection to the person; severed from the protective aspects of the Promare in a swirl of nuclear fire, the would-be host naturally turned to ash.

The main tipping point to these incidents seemed to be when the connection flickered and the person started to feel the pain of the flames, got scared, released more flames, ad infinitum, until the connection was fully severed and they were swallowed whole. For the rest, they were lucky enough to have some sort of safety valve and calm down with the initial release of flames, either from fear or awe or simple exhausted burnout.

And then there was Lio. He just gave himself over to the flames in his rages, and resonated with the Promare _more_ when he was angry. He wasn’t the only one, but he seemed to be the one who could stay the clearest for longest when it happened, at least of the people he knew. His Promare also seemed to be more in tune with not roasting him to a crisp, for which he was grateful. He had no idea if other people were that way, or why it was, but he suspected it was because he was born Burnish.

His parents had both been Burnish, and while the scientific community was out on whether or not Promare were symbiotic or parasitic creatures at the end of the day, he suspected his mother’s little fire-alien finger-sandwich had reproduced somehow while she was incubating him. That was how she talked about it, anyway. Whether this was genuine reproduction on the Promare’s part or simply calling in a friend to live within her fetus for a while, he wasn’t sure, but it hadn’t been easy on her.

It’d left some weird side effects at the time; she’d also miscarried several other children, as did most Burnish women who managed to conceive, and he didn’t know about anyone else alive that’d been born this way, at least not lately. Because of their higher than average resting temperature, most Burnish men were effectively sterile and the women were “inhospitable” hosts. But here he was, with a Promare that seemed far more in tune with keeping human beings alive than everyone else.

Sure, that was saying a _lot_ about the nature of the soul and when it arrived, but he tried not to think about that. His cells had electrochemical signals from day one, so he supposed it wasn’t impossible a proto-Promare polyp (or whatever it would have been) could have incubated in there along with him, as the consistently warmest part of a woman’s body. The Promares appeared in visible space as dancing triangles, either singular, in clusters, or fused into other shapes, all about the size of a human palm, so a proto one would be as small as it wanted, he supposed. It’d fit.

To put it scientifically though, he supposed his Promare was a hybrid. It had a lower resting temperature, but also a higher and more stable resonance rate with his physical existence. But to the laymen, he liked to say it had just been born on Earth and grown up with him, so it was better suited to its environment than a lot of the wild-caught ones, and leave it at that.

That didn’t stop the fact that Promare were apparently colony creatures, though. They could band together, especially in proximity, to communicate, resonate, and charge each other. It happened a lot when Burnish would sleep in groups on the run—they ended up all having the same dream more often than not, and would wake up feeling more refreshed than normal in a vague and inexplicable way.

There were a myriad of colony experiences, with people reporting all manner of strange and unverifiable phenomenon to each other with some frequency. But one that was very much real and ever present was that the explosion of flames of one Burnish could also effect another, kind of like a scream or bird call; it’d shiver through nearby people like radiation through space.

One of the first skills the Burnish elders taught the newbies was how to deal with that. It tended to come across to people as just stray thoughts or feelings of varying intensity, by orders of magnitude increasing or decreasing depending on one’s emotional connection to the other person and emotional capacity overall. In most cases, this did little but require an extra calming breath or two, but in some cases, like with siblings or parents in true distress, this could literally light fires in people or around them. This was like stray x-ray bursts hitting clouds of gas and starting stellar fires—only in this case, the gas cloud was somebody’s potted plant, or bed, or pet.

Which in turn caused more emotions, usually bad or distressed ones, which could lead to infernos. He’d seen it happen. Rarely, luckily, but truly, and it was something he wished he could burn from his memory banks.

But that was where being the Prime came in. He hadn’t noticed at first, hadn’t learned how to do it consciously for a long, long time. But Lio was able to channel other Promare fires in his vicinity and then either dispel them or synthesize them into something of his own making. In fact, they often sucked up into him automatically, which was a bit weird, but he had enough cognitive dissonance in his mind all the time anyway that he was pretty damn good at shoveling things down to the bottom of a metaphorical emotional riverbed and walking right past them until they bled out of existence.

Where did all that extra energy go? When he wasn’t just bleeding it off behind him like flaming tire tracks, hissing vapor/smoke, or, god forbid, x-rays—or being turned into some immediate creation—he seemed to be able to store it, somehow, in an ethereal nexus that connected to the Promare main body, where ever the hell in space and time that was. It wouldn’t last forever—he suspected the Promare did something like eat it over time—but he was okay with that. He didn’t want other people’s emotional baggage anyway.

That was also where the physical manifestations from the flames came from. Very, very few people could make the flames condense into solids. He had no idea how it worked scientifically speaking, but generally speaking, you wished upon a Promare star and it’d deliver. They were able to manifest things from your imagination and make it real with the metals in their home star.

Which lead Lio to a very dangerous thought: The Promare weren’t symbiotes for no reason. They needed energy for _something,_ and they were searching far and wide for it.

They needed energy, but for what?— _Fission_. They were eating energy from other life forms through the dimension rift so that they could continue to separate elements in their star to keep it burning longer. Least, that was what he wondered.

But that also lead Lio to some other questions: was their star really a star? And not, like, the inside of Jupiter? Apparently enough were living in the center of the Earth since the rift opened to jeopardize the entire core’s molecular structure and energy level, so he had to wonder. But if they were, in God’s honest fact, from inside a star, that left a lot of questions.

What level of the star did they exist in? Stars had layers just like planets and their atmospheres. Could they exist between levels? Did they have favorite elements to eat and synthesize and antagonistic ones too? What kind of star did they live in? Main Sequence? Off-Sequence? Cool stars? Hot stars?

If they were really as sentient as some claimed, were they doing all this to keep the equilibrium alive in a dying star? Was the amount of energy necessary to create and sustain the dimension rift, perhaps, a result of a new star forming or going supernova or something?

It was all fantastically above his pay grade but he liked thinking about it. Liked believing that if he just listened long enough to the background radiation from the Promare, that he’d hear the answer someday.

And that brought the issue of the Promare’s sentience. To him, they didn’t seem as sentient as people claimed; he figured a lot of that was people hearing their own reflections, or other people’s emotions as they bounced around the colony. He personally suspected they were somewhere between jellyfish and moss.

They could feel distress and adversity, as well as excited and energetic, but they didn’t really conceptualize it without people’s complex minds to help the process. They simply _felt_ , and then _acted_ , a lot like really energetic jellyfish. In the mean time, in the sea of a star (or gas giant?), they just bounced around between molecules, looking for energy to chew on and...doing whatever Promares did with each other. Resonate, he supposed. Trade info on where the good stuff was through their collective memory. Fuse. Burn.

The jury was still out on the specifics, but that was Lio’s working definition anyway. The Promare didn’t seem to mind; when he tried to conceptualize it, his just hummed and floated like it ever did in a normal, nonexcited state, enjoying the view through his eyes.

And speaking of the hive mentality of them...

Sometimes, Lio would wake up and have multiple Promare in his body. This was not a rare phenomenon among Burnish; the Promare that attached to individuals disappeared—flickered out—when the person died, but it was entirely possible that the Promare itself still existed, just going into a non-visible form (or back through the rift?), though it seemed unlikely that they could exist for long on their own from observable evidence; they flickered out like candle flames when outside a host body. Therefore, it made sense that they’d try to attach to another host as quickly as possible.

As well, every Burnish knew about _the voices_ : the sense that Promare had a collective consciousness to some degree, that ebbed and flowed like they did, and so they appeared in your synapses as _multiple_ voices when communicating their “feelings.”

Sometimes, the extra beings in his existential sphere felt like mini Promares, playing politely on a field trip to his body, or just kind of window shopping. Sometimes they’d enter his metaphysical body and attach to his own Promare, fusing into a stronger core that’d stay that way ever after (He figured he was up to a dodecahedron now, as far as his original triangle’s geometric status was concerned).

But sometimes he’d get a _really_ energetic one that wouldn’t fuse, wouldn’t _leave_ , and wouldn’t _move_ to its own La Grangian chakra spot. It’d knock around him like a free radical and he’d be sick for _days_ until he could get it to move on, or find a way to expel it. It would raise his body temperature so high, and cause so much resonant dissonance, that he’d feel like he was splitting in two. He probably was, frankly, at a molecular level. It was like a Promare virus, tuning him to the wrong frequency.

He was not the only person this happened to, but it seemed to happen to him with more frequency than the others. It had nothing to do with his immune system—Burnish bodies were so hot that they never got sick; viri and bacteria died in them. The Promare constantly recreated their broken cells, which was nice of them, so this phenomenon...this was...

It really made him wonder if there was some kind of Promare warfare. Or different colonies of Promare tuned to different vibrations, different emotions, that maybe lived in different levels of their star. Or if some of them were cannibalistic, rather than synthetic. If there was some connection to him being the hottest human star in his stellar neighborhood, and the wandering Promares attaching to him first and foremost. He didn’t know. It was the one thing he wished Kray’s asshole administration would study, if it was bothering to study Burnish at all. That and how to get rid of the damn things.

But that was an important point in and of itself. What exactly were the Promare attracted to in people? If the colony was attracted to molten-hot celestial bodies, individuals were probably attracted to blazing-hot humans, which, in their case, would mean electromagnetically (emotionally) or electrochemically (physical heat). But Promares weren’t attaching to every beast of a man in sight—Lio himself, along with the women and children, were well proof of that—nor were they inhabiting things like, say, nuclear power plants, which objectively had more mechanical energy than people’s bodies, so it must have been emotional intensity, or, for the religious, the spiritual intensity.

That was a dangerous road to go down but the elders in the community (the actually old folks) and the religiously affiliated would discuss it amongst themselves at times. Lio politely rejected their advances toward him in that regard, but it didn’t stop the more impressionable and superstitious Burnish from regarding him like a religious figure. Which, admittedly, was a nice way to fan his flames when he was out to help people and needed a little more righteousness to support his destruction, but he tried to wear it like a ring rather than a mantle.

The Prime status couldn’t have helped all that, though. Prime Stars had a pull to them because of the Promare within them that amplified any other Burnish’s natural human inclination toward them. A Promare’s pull acted upon the host’s unconscious region and would low-key brainwash them into doing what the Prime directed through sheer force of emotional resonance; it was the human expression of the hive mind or herd mentality.

Generally speaking, this translated into people being a little more willing than they should have been to agree to Lio’s requests—or conversely, a little more brusque with him if they weren’t in his hold—which was a power he tried very hard to not abuse.

And it was hard. It was so _easy_ to reach out and grab another’s emotions, for him. It was taboo in Burnish culture, but it was still easy to do, and sometimes the Promare whispered at him to do it when he was particularly short of time. Kray’s mindset, however despicable, made all the sense in the world to Lio.

Unfortunately, the further manifestation of this was that a very strong Burnish could _physically control_ the weaker ones around them, both as people and as flames. It would feel like having a hand clenched around your heart, your flame, and then pulling it in one direction, sometimes entirely out of your body. It would feel sweet to acquiesce, the way it was sweet to _burn_ , and resisting it would hurt like a full body ache. Resisting too hard could smother your Promare and threatened to snuff it out and leave you twitching and unable to remember how to move, how to breathe.

It had only happened to Lio once before. But he never wanted to experience it again.

It was something that Burnish achieved only rarely, and was a forbidden thing to do to someone. But just like with the stars in the sky, the most massive star in the neighborhood was by default the thing other nearby bodies orbited around, and human culture was rarely different on its own. So, whomever the most powerful Burnish was in an area of influence, they pulled in what amounted to a magical amount of followers and respect with their gravity.

Luckily, the ability to physically _control_ other Promare was something that appeared to be a level most Burnish didn’t reach. Lio might have been able to do it, but he’d never tried. He didn’t want to. But the ability could have had something to do with the dodecahedron thing. Most Burnish hadn’t been Burnish as long as he had, didn’t burned as bright as he did. It could have been a natural power to achieve over time, with enough effort.

After all, Meis and Guiera, as well as other teams within Mad Burnish, would occasionally rescue small bands of Burnish trapped under the thrall of such a star out in the vast wilderness that lay beyond the many city-states’ control. Free will was still a thing among the Burnish, especially those with very dim flames, so some of the rescuees would inevitably go out on their own, while some would choose to stay with the refugee group.

Those that did stay might orbit around Lio, while others would attach as moons to his lieutenants. Some would become binary stars with lovers or clusters of friends like Pluto and its many satellites. It wasn’t any different than normal human devotion and loyalty beyond a few mystical elements, except for when someone tried to abuse it. Then a lot of flames and agitated Promares were involved.

Luckily, Lio, Meis, Guiera, and the others who had experienced the thrall of a hungry Prime Star had done a fairly good job of keeping the phenomenon quiet, in part because people just didn’t like to talk about what they’d been through under such a force. But he knew, in the back of his mind, that it’d come up again someday. Once the Burnish assimilated and scientific knowledge of their status deepened to the point that being Burnish became a stable “condition,” then it would become the basis of the hierarchies in the culture. He rued that day.

What Lio did _not_ expect was how being the Prime Star might effect his romantic interests.

He had a war to run, had refugees to keep safe, so for years he had no interest in romance at all—there simply wasn’t room for it. In the back of his mind, he’d think about it while drifting off to sleep, but it was a complicated thing he didn’t have time for.

(God help them if he hive-minded _that_ dream though, because they’d all _know_ it was from his point of view. He knew of at least three real-life relationships Meis had started that way, fuck it all.)

But as for him, there was the further complication that he could never be sure if people’s interest in him was because of him, his face, his status, or because of the gravitational pull of his Promare. And even if he _could_ piece it apart—which he usually didn’t have the time and mental energy, let alone the experience for—him falling for someone could prove to be... _dangerous_.

Even for a Burnish, he blazed especially hot when he was intensely into an emotion. Orgasms were...difficult, to say the least. As much as Meis and Guiera joked about it, it really wasn’t _nice_ to hurt someone with your release and the buildup to it, let alone turn them to ash for it. Them, or the furniture. Or the ecosystem, if they happened to be outside. Having ejaculate that could set non-Burnish things on fire was...less funny than it sounded.

So Lio’d lived a mostly sexless life (minus getting pulled into Meis and Gueira’s binary occasionally) and took out his frustration on the buildings of Promepolis instead. It’d all been fine, his life predictable even on its chaotic path—until he’d met _The Idiot_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Send me things! Quill is at -> skies.over.dreamfield@gmail.com
> 
> I can take actual image files or links to dropboxes and stuff. Thanks!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It should be noted that this fic was made possible by a manic episode that came from the end of two weeks not leaving my house for much of anything and working my every waking hour until I broke down and wrote this thing for two straight days because I couldn't cope with my life. And that writing fit was fueled almost entirely by the song "Shadow & Truth" By One III notes. Thanks? My synesthesia just really loves Autotune...
> 
> *Teacher Voice* If you would like to learn more about stars and space science, write your Congressmen to fund PBS/the BBC/NASA, and then do what I did, and listen to the podcast Exocast.

The professor’s mech was a...startlingly calming experience. It channeled his Promare energy into a resonance pattern that sung like church bells. It was as easy as flexing a muscle to use the thing—rather than raging and burning up—and the entire time he felt Galo’s soul there with him.

Galo was, of course, physically there with him, but it was more than that. He was at Galo’s back, with Galo’s attention elsewhere; but in the chamber in the back, where he had a bird’s eye view on everything, Lio felt oddly _not alone_. Like something in Galo’s metaphysical existence had swelled and was floating around with him. Lio drank it in, and it fed his flames in a way that didn’t tire him out and break him down the way the Promare did. It was ridiculously pleasant.

He suspected it’d be different with someone else in there; resonating with Guiera or Meis in a particularly hot inferno (like inside a burning building with them all in armor) felt punchy and sharp. This, on the other hand, felt like...being home. Like having a safe, warm embrace to come home to at the end of a tough day.

It was, he suspected, Galo’s heroic soul personified.

And he liked it. He liked the call of this firefighter’s brightly shining soul.

The irony of that was not lost on him, but he wasn’t the type to let irony do anything but bring a quiet smile to his lips. He could roll with it. There were good jokes involved, delightful metaphors to untangle. He liked it, deep down, though he’d never admit it without a drink and some razzing. _I captured a firefighter into my orbit. The Mad Boss of Mad Burnish tamed the Hero of the City and turned him to a simple satellite!_ he’d claim to his lieutenants with a roar.

But they knew better: he’d found someone to light his fires. A hunk of young burning love named Galo Thymos and his goddamned unquenchable flame (and sexy hero bod).

It wasn’t too long after they’d saved the world that’d it’d happened: His Promare had decided to make a move and capture the man into a tidally locked orbit.

He’d been thinking about Galo in a dreamy haze while he was legally drunk off of lack of sleep and paperwork legalese, and as he’d wandered out of the Burning Rescue office he’d commandeered to find food, he’d seen him. The man, hanging out with Aina and leaning over the back of the couch for it, had looked up from his sexy lean and flashed Lio a smile and completed the greeting with a happy wave.

In the same instant, he stepped over Lio’s heliopause. The responding resonance that hit Lio was so powerful that he thought he was going to fall over. It was like Lio’s body and soul was a tower bell that had been struck; he could hardly breathe he was so stunned.

He had, in fact, stumbled, as he’d been walking when this all happened. His knees buckled right out from under him, his vision went white, and his ears rang. His chest hurt, his flame guttering, and Lio clutched at it from his knees as he gasped for air. From the sounds of it, he’d cast out a shockwave of heat in a sphere because everyone in the room had yelped and several things had crashed to the floor—and, a few seconds later, before the last shards stopped rolling on the floor, the sprinklers went off.

Even through the deluge of cold water barely above the freezing point, when he felt Galo’s familiar leather gloves wrap around his back and hold him up, it only made it ache _worse_. Ache _hotter_. His body felt like a crisp, cold block of ice but his insides warmed hotter and hotter by the second, and the sound of Promare voices suddenly came to life in his mind, bursting into his consciousness like the glow of a supernova growing in the sky. He couldn’t _see_ anything else.

_Oh no, oh no, I’m—–_

For a moment, he’d panicked, thinking he was overheating and in danger of turning into a blaze that’d roast everything in a mile radius. But then...Galo had flipped him over and cradled him in his arms. As a steady, meaty hand gripped the base of his jaw and tilted his head back, the Promare call ebbed.

As the cold water rained down and drenched everything in sight, including his chest and his nethers, a crisis was averted. The pitch and swell of the ache faded, he could see real life, and he was left feeling honestly cold, except for where Galo was rubbing his face.

He was shivering, he was drenched, the Promare were quiet, and he was being held in Galo Thymos’s intensely buff and life-saving firefighter arms that, at the moment, felt tremendously hot.

“What the fuck was _that_?” Galo hissed in strangled alarm. Several other people did too, at different distances and intervals, though Galo’s was actually directed at him in concern. It sounded so far away to Lio’s ears, as he stared at the shiny glow of the spherical rain coming from the sprinkler above them.

“Did you feel that?” Lio growled, closing his eyes tightly shut as he leaned like a limp fish into Galo’s arms, still pressing into his chest in an attempt to get to his staccatoed heart.

“Feel what?”

“Did you feel it?!” Lio snapped.

“Yeah I did, what the fuck was it?!” Galo cried back, barely able to see for the rain.

The water hailing from the ceiling suddenly stopped. Someone must have dealt with it. When a fire station triggered the internal firefighting dispatch network, did they call another station? Or were they expected to help their own place? Lio realized he didn’t know. It would be useful to know, for any anti-government incidents he might have to start in the future.

All this was streaming through his mind the same as the water was streaming off his hair.

Realizing his eyes weren’t open, he blinked up at Galo. The strapping man’s blue eyes gazed down at him with concern.

“Are you okay?” Galo asked. “You aren’t going to erupt on me, are you?”

 _A rookie Burnish move? Hardly,_ Lio thought derisively, but then realized: That was actually what had just happened. A super-heated flare. Shit.

Oblivious, Galo was holding Lio like a dancer who had collapsed poetically on the last note of a song. There were people all around them, poor mortals waiting to see if they were about to die. And all Lio could think of was how nice Galo smelled.

So Lio laughed, and laughed and laughed, hysterically, until it devolved into coughing and winces of pain and smoke puffing out of his esophagus like a mythical creature.

Frowning, Galo shifted and stood up, picking him up bridal style like he was no more than a moderately heavy set of grocery sacks.

At this development, the Promare in Lio’s head came back to the fore, singing a symphony of absolutely enthralled plinks and plonks, dings and chimes. They were clearly calling their friends to come see the humans be strange and insatiable.

The Promare in Lio’s chest in particular _also_ wanted Galo to come even closer. To merge, to meld, to create gravity waves. Lio didn’t understand what they were on about exactly, but he knew he wanted to be _all over Galo Thymos’s skin right now,_ with nothing but his own, wet, naked skin to do it. He wanted to create as many filthy sparks as he could against him. Aina wouldn’t mind, right? Repayment for getting the place wet?

“Are you...what’s wrong? Are you having a heart attack? Can you breathe? Here, lie down and tell me your symptoms—” Galo made for the couch, boots squelching over the inch of water on the floor.

“Galo that’s not fireproof,” Aina noted, sounding bedraggled.

“Shit. Maybe—?” He turned in dizzying circle. The main room was full of flammable things, including the floor. So much of human life was combustible. Lio could almost see _Why must I be a carbon-based lifeform on a carbon based planet,_ coming into Galo’s brain, though admittedly it wasn’t in so many words.

Actually, Lio realized, he could _hear_ his thoughts, resonating through the space between them.

“Ah, shit,” Lio noted, running a hand over his face. That was a bad sign; he wasn’t supposed to be doing that, lest Galo start just snogging him mindlessly from Lio’s gravity waves pulsing into him.

Not that that would be so _bad_ , but...

Just as he thought that, Galo stopped and looked down at him. Lio looked back at him, eyes wide and frozen solid.

“Did someone piss off the supernova again?” Lucia asked, breaking Galo’s attention by poking her head out from the computer room. “So glad I turned off the sprinklers in here.”

“You what?” Varys asked, likewise poking his head out from the gym. “Ten chocolate peanut butter balls or I tell Ignis.”

“God dammit!”

“The floor...” Aina sighed. “If we don’t squeegee this, it’ll warp...”

As three sighs turned into lingering silence, Lio just laughed manically with another rush of hormones he really, really thought he was too old for. “The Promare in my head are so loud I can’t see.”

More silence as everyone decided if they were about to die.

“Are you having a stroke?” Galo, idiot hero that he was, asked clinically. “Maybe I should just throw him in the bathtub with some ice?”

“Well he’s not going to be able to self-diagnose something like _that_ , dummy,” Lucia noted. Aina agreed, noting that she didn’t want to have to deal with that much steam in the bathroom. “Take him outside lest he solar-flare the place again.”

“No, no, I’m fine,” Lio waved them all away, and started the rather difficult and unconvincing work of getting down to his wobbly feet. Galo let him, but still held onto his shoulder. It made Lio’s Promare giggle and dance, especially because of how firm the grip was, and all the blood rushed out of his head. “It’s just...ah, hell...” He suddenly felt like he wasn’t getting enough _air_. “Sorry about y-your stuff, I didn’t mean...”

“You don’t sound fine...”

Galo’s bright eyes watched him intently, his wet hair plastered around his jaw. Lio watched the thick muscles in his neck just as intently back, and swallowed hard.

And then, just like that, the room was filled with fog.

Several cries went off, including his name in angry tones. The entirety of the water on the floor had flash evaporated.

“Oh shit,” Lio moaned when he realized what had happened. Galo pulled him close, as if he was protecting him from the steam of all things, and that caused a new wave of hot dizziness hit him, so hot Galo shoved him back with a hiss and cry of pain. _Galo,_ mister _It’s not hot at all_ , couldn’t handle it.

Lio stumbled backward, and even though he honestly deserved that it still wasn’t a good feeling. Fear, and rejection, were Lio’s dousers, and so even though it struck him hard, Galo had actually done the one thing he should have.

With the door pushed open, the steam followed him out. Lio gritted his teeth and forced himself to breathe as he stumbled to the front steps outside. Concrete. Good. The power (and high melting point) of technology.

Lio slumped against the building and onto his ass. As the day’s cool breeze hit his skin, he was mildly aware that it was creating wind around him.

It wasn’t long before the sounds of Galo propping open the front door of the station were audible. Beside him, the man descended through the mini whirlwind to sit next to him. It looked lackadaisical, but he nonetheless hovered, wavering in the wind even wet as he was. He held an extinguisher of anti-Burnish foam in one hand, though he wasn’t readying to use it.

“What’s going on, please tell me. I’ve never seen you like this...”

It’d only been a few weeks since they’d met, but they’d spent enough time together that Galo was able to what was normal; Lio had to give him credit for that.

And it was a nice thing, to think that someone was paying so much attention to you, especially in the midst of a trying time.

Lio took a few deep breaths and told the Promare ringing a chorus through his soul to calm the hell down. But it was an urge, an ache. It didn’t _want_ to go away. He ran a woozy hand over his forehead with a groan. Galo quickly replaced it with his own.

“Hell, you’re burning hot.”

Lio frowned at him for that one.

“Well, hotter than usual I mean.”

The blond Burnish sighed and let his head loll forward, his chin resting on his chest. He breathed through his nose and out through his mouth once, twice. Tasted smoke and vapor and the lick of flame. Tried to ground himself with his hands over his face and his feet splayed hard.

“Holy shit, you’re being...you’re being a fire breathing dragon right now, do I need to go get Guiera? I’ll...I’ll go get Guiera. Or maybe a hose. Hang on!”

“No!” Lio all but shouted at him, and Galo stilled just enough that Lio was able to reach a hand out to him. “ _Hold_ me.”

_Don’t make me say it out loud..._

He was already groaning at himself inside his mind. But the Promare, betraying things that they were at times, appeared in his mind’s eye with happy little faces. They made squeeing noises of glee and contentment when Lio managed to get off Galo’s glove and entangle his fingers with his.

It instantly sated them to a degree. The electric spark of two flesh and blood bodies connecting sent the extra energy back and forth between them, until it finally bled off through Galo into the ground.

While Galo—now all dry—shifted a little from the sudden heat on the steps underneath him, warmed like it’d been all afternoon on a sunny day, he took it in stride. For not being a Burnish—just a Burnish protectorate housing an ember of Lio’s flame—Galo seemed incredibly unphased by megawatts of energy sliding through his body. General Burnish etiquette dictated you at least _asked_ before you used someone as a grounder or a conduit, because not only was it dangerous but it could create all manner of physical responses. But Galo didn’t even seem to mind, didn’t even breathe hard. “That was interesting, what was that?”

Lio sighed and tilted his head back against the wall of the building that he was leaning on as his body finally cooled. His hair stuck to the bricks. “Thank _God_ ,” he whispered up at the sky. The blue sky, that was _not_ the weird mottled colors of the Promare nexus that colored the background of their collective consciousness whenever they showed up in his hallucinations and threatened to swallow him whole.

Lio may have been the most massive star in his tiny galaxy, but he was not impermeable. He was absolutely still human at the end of the day, able to lose equilibrium and burn to death from letting himself get too far gone, and the way his heart was hammering in his chest felt a bit like impeding death. Luckily, the burn off had lowered his temperature, quieted the power of an entire star running through him, looking for a human node to flare from.

Lio was lucky he had such a strong “magnetic” field to shield him from it, in the form of Galo’s heavenly skin.

He shivered a few more times while Galo sat next to him patiently. Well, as patiently as Galo ever got. He was boring a hole in Lio’s head with his eyes.

Those eyes...that were so beautiful and intense and clear and heroic.

Lio may have been the hero of his people, but he didn’t feel like one. He’d lost so many people, and he was either angry or grief-stricken _all_ the time, on the days when he couldn’t be purposefully emotionless. He couldn’t remember what happiness felt like, and perhaps he had never had free, easy happiness at all. The closest he could come to it was giddy and hysterical.

But this man...he just walked through the day like everyone expected a hero should. And Lio adored every minute of being in the shine of it.

Still, just thinking that was making his condition worse, and the burning Promepolis sun grimaced and forced himself to concentrate by sucking in large gulps of cooling air.

“You...sure you’re okay?” Poor Galo Thymos asked, innocent that he was.

“I will...be fine,” Lio noted, picking himself up off the ground. “Sorry you had to see that.”

“What...what _was_ that?” Galo asked, helping him up automatically. “Are you _seriously_ okay?”

How could he put it? It wasn’t like he could tell him the truth. He’d get laughed off the face of the Earth for it, especially given all the trouble and damage he’d just caused the station.

Though, Galo Thymos, Hero of Promepolis and co-savior of the world, was not the kind of man who’d hold a good laugh _against_ him. Maybe he should just say it...

“It’s nothing,” Lio stated as he gazed at his hands, held in both of Galo’s and weight pressed into them. “I’m just in heat.”

“Oh sur—wait, what?” Galo put his hands on his hips and shook his head out. “Like a cat?”

“Like a cat,” Lio admitted. He’d get him back for that later. “And in love.”

“But...” Galo sounded almost sad for him. “Why would _love_ do that to you?”

“ _Because_ , you _oaf_ , I haven’t had many attempts at it and the Promare attached to my eternal soul has no idea what do with my hormones while manifesting its interest in creating a binary bond and collision-path orbit with a passing fellow neutron star, pleasedon’tmakemeexplainanymoreofthis, it’s _embarassing,_ ” he ground out through his teeth.

“I...I don’t understand any of that. You _must_ be sick, you’re talking science at me. _Me_.”

“I resonated with you so hard I fell over and flared,” he muttered, rubbing a hand over his reddening face as he stared at Galo’s chest. “Is...is all.”

Good Lord, Guiera would never let him live this down. Meis _might,_ but only after a good, long time and some payback. Lio took a deep breath, pushed his hair back, and then looked anywhere but the handsome, absolute specimen of a human before him. This was _not_ the way the leader of Mad Burnished behaved. It was _not_.

Galo, meanwhile, was staring at him hard, the gears slowly, ever so slowly, turning.

“Love is just warm,” Lio tried again in a tiny, guilty voice, staring at his chest and threading his hands over it, right where his Promare always burned. “Warmer than normal, and I’m not used to it.”

“‘Resonating,” Galo stated, tasting the word. “‘Promare.’ ‘In love’... With...”

But just when his eyes went wide and Lio thought he’d figured it out, Galo sputtered, “But who are you in love _with_? I want to meet the chick that’s got one hell of a hold over you. Is it Aina? She _is_ pretty cute. But I’d think you and Lucia would actually have more to talk about—”

A dismissive laugh shot out of Lio and an echo of the Promare laughed with him, so hard it was possible Galo had picked up on it. Normally they wouldn’t be so vocal but this was a new experience for him, for them, and he was damn tired from all the rubble and fighting and bureaucracy and death and sheer _adjusting_ of the last few weeks. He couldn’t hold it in any longer.

So instead of explaining it with words, the Burnish leader held a graceful hand against his heart, materializing a fond flame at the end of two fingers. He flicked his wrist until they pointed at Galo, and the little flame, no bigger than a chicken egg, hovered over to his friend’s twice-awarded chest until it hit his shirt and winked out of existence with a pop.

Galo stared down at the empty space for a moment. Then another moment.

When he looked up, their eyes locked.

Lio was not a quitter. He was not the type to run. But he wanted to, right then.

Instead, he gave Galo the most readable look he’d ever sent anyone. His face just burned, hotter and hotter, until a little bit of steam curled out of his nostrils when he exhaled and his eyes glowed. And then he stared at the fucking ground like a dumbass little _punk_ who totally _wasn’t_ able to level cities with his _nuclear alien fire._

Galo, jubilant, boisterous, unshakeable Galo Thymos, Hero of Promepolis and resonant star to his own, whispered a stunned, “ _Oh._ ”

“Sorry, it’s dumb, I know—” Face burning, Lio wheeled on his heel.

Galo caught him by the bicep. Something in his voice changed, to be low and heavy. “No, no. It’s not stupid. ...I’m flattered, actually.”

Lio pulled at his arm. Galo held him tight. Lio raised the heat on that part of his skin. Galo held it tighter.

“You could even say...”

When Lio looked back at him, he had the most insufferable grin on his face.

“...You’ve got the hots for me.”

Another woosh of warm air burst into existence around them. Galo’s hair, devoid of gel at this point, fluttered upward. He grinned and snickered.

“Dolt,” Lio, face so red it was almost purple, muttered, finally pulling away from him successfully.

“Loveable dolt, apparently.” Galo put his hands on his hips and struck a pose, apparently pleased with himself.

—And then he leaned down and pecked a kiss on Lio’s cheek.

A shiver shot down Lio’s back and came out as fire from his feet. Galo yelped and dodged back, down the stairs.

The look Lio gave him was probably entirely misconstruable as a flame demon’s ire. Instead, Lio just burned for a little while, and then said, mechanically, “God dammit, that was nice.”

At the base of the station stairs that was his long-worked for dream job, Galo looked down the block to either side, then laughed and rubbed at the back of his head.

“I think you’re nice too.”

And then the anti-Burnish tech on the side of the building tripped and shot Lio in the face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a third chapter with the smut in it, but it's not quite done yet. Look for it in a few days!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops, there's a fourth chapter now.
> 
> This fic got even longer thanks to Nasferatank mentioning that they'd read 90k words of romcom about Lio's fiery fails toward Galo and...yeah.........
> 
> /hides

Back in the station, in the communal shower room’s sole bathtub. Lio was buried in ice cubes that had not yet started to melt. Galo sat next to him on a footstool, chin in his hand and eyeing the purple bruise running down Lio’s face, neck, and chest like aerial footage of a river plain until it finally fizzled into an inland delta at his belt line.

Galo was in his normal attire of a tight black T-shirt and loose work pants (unfortunately), but Lio was only in black jeans, having left his shoes, shirt, and belt in a tidy pile on the shelves just inside the door (fortunately).

The tub, installed by some previous station head complete with massage jets, was a converted clawfoot big enough for two. It sat in a corner of the communal showers, cordoned off by a quarter-circle shower curtain bar that went from wall to wall around it. The two of them were alone, commandeering the most fire-proof space in the building to keep an eye on Lio’s “problem.”

“Good thing Freeze Force isn’t attached to that stuff anymore,” Galo said conversationally. “That would have been hard to explain beyond, ‘he ran that way.’”

Lio sighed a ragged note of agreement, sending small landslides of ice tumbling as he sunk further down into the tub. He still wasn’t feeling well; it felt like his head and his body were spinning in two different directions, and he couldn’t control his fire much at all—turning on the tap at all made it _explode_. “My hero~” he warbled lightly.

Galo—handsome, chiseled, good-smelling Galo—chuckled and sat up, taking in a long, grounding breath as he rubbed his hands on his knees. “I never thought someone having the hots for me could turn into an actual fire. I’m kinda torn.”

“ _Oh_?” Lio cracked an eye open. He was concentrating on keeping his temperature low, telling the Promare to be _Low, low, low,_ and they’d ring back with, _Like Earth’s core?_ and he’d have to keep telling them, _No, **lower**. Low like the trees and the birds and the animals and things NOT ON FIRE. _And then they’d just say, _But why :D?_

Promare liked to solve all their problems with burning. They associated it with the optimal, snug warmth of their preferred environment. He sighed again, a little bit of super-heated air coming out of his mouth and shimmering.

It was hard to lock them onto the right target when they were excited, because they held no primordial memory of biological beings and non-molten matter. Sure, they were attached to human beings for the last thirty years, but it was just a fraction of them doing so, for an impossibly small fraction of their species’ existence in time (presumably). And just like with light escaping stars, it took a _looooong_ time for new information to seep into the center of the Promare knowledge nexus.

But it was _especially_ hard to get them to cool down with goddamned Galo Thymos, newest hunk of the Sexy Firefighter yearly fund-raising calendar, right next to him.

Luckily, ice water made erections hard.

Well, the other kind of hard. Difficult. There. Fuck language.

Seriously. He could communicate with inter-dimensional alien beings with his emotions and mental image sets, what did he need words for?

Communicating with Galo, however... Hm. Well, maybe he didn’t need words for _that,_ either. Not for this particular problem and its solution...

“Well sure! I can’t be lighting fires in my name. I’m supposed to be putting them out.”

“Isn’t your soul constantly burning though?”

“Well that’s the thing! My fires are internal! They aren’t the scare-and-hurt kind!”

“Are you calling my fires frightening and malicious?”

“N...no of course not!”

“I see. Just checking you weren’t being racist.”

“No! Never!!” 

Lio chuckled; razzing Galo was always fun. Still, he couldn’t quite argue with the idea, because his flame honestly and truly _was_ frightening at this very moment. Even to him.

“You’re either brave or stupid to sit with me while I’m going pulsar,” he muttered bitterly. “Can’t tell which.”

“I don’t know what that means exactly,” Galo offered back, “but it’s not like I’m just gonna leave a buddy to burn, you know.”

“Kind of you,” Lio muttered. He hissed as he shifted, wincing from the pain of the bruise blooming along his body.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” Galo asked, in a tone spoken from a person who was very used to being told _yes_.

Having given away too many of his cards already today, Lio glanced at him in a rather prickly fashion just to be contrary, but when faced with Galo’s Genuinely Concerned Good-Guy face, he let out a long breath and forced himself to school his expression into something nicer. (It wasn’t hard, considering he wanted to jump into the arms of the man who owned that face.)

“Ask away,” he muttered with a tired, yet lofty, tone, waving a hand that left the air itself alight like he’d trailed a sparkler through it. “You caught me fair and square, Hero of Promepolis. I have given myself over to your icy prison. Do your worst.”

“Sure. Uh...” Galo shifted, sitting taller, and then, with some effort, lowered his voice noticeably and held out a theatric hand. “ _Dread leader of Mad Burnish, you may be my captive, but your powers are not yet fully miiine.”_ He clenched his fist.

Lio’s eyes widened as a flush of heat went down his body (not the least of which reason was the way the muscles in Galo’s arm and neck flexed with that fist). Water started to trickle around Lio’s bare chest, which had vaguely started to glow just under the skin, projecting tiny prismatic spectra on the other side of the ice.

Galo, however, completely oblivious and actually kind of good at the whole acting thing, stopped suddenly and took a breath, his posture deflating. “Wow being lofty is hard. Um... But yeah.” He came forward and leaned on the edge of the tub, cocking his head as he rested his chin on his forearms. “Why haven’t you healed yourself yet?”

Luckily, the thought cooled Lio down again, the fury of thirst evaporating and lowering the Promares’ energy state. Lio looked at his chest—thank God, anywhere but Galo’s tanned and rippling muscles as he flexed them—and touched a hand down the bruised and seeping flesh. He pressed at it thoughtfully; it helped him focus against the urge to _Meld, entwine, ignite_.

And a particularly treacherous, _Fuse_.

But Galo waited patiently, and eventually Lio swallowed down enough of the church choir in his periphery to offer, “Sometimes I just like to wear my badges of honor, like any guy.”

It totally _wasn’t_ because he was afraid of calling on the flames right now. Totally not.

Galo’s eyes tracked over him, something unusually soft in the pretty blues. Lio turned away, baring his pale neck and shoulder to him. To his surprise, though—and he really didn’t need any more surprises today—a touch came. The tips of Galo’s warm fingers whispered along the edge of the bruise, tracing it like points on a map. “How does it...work?”

Lio’s heart leapt into his throat, and so did his flames. He stared at this display like a frozen turkey, smoke falling from the sides of his mouth, as he tried desperately to prevent the absolute _rainbow_ of Promare-enduced screeching around him from manifesting physically.

He failed, and an actual kaleidoscope of colors began shining from his _eyes_.

“Oh, that’s neat,” Galo breathed, watching the colors project onto his hand. “What else can they do, huh?” he asked, almost like he was coaxing a pet.

The tone made Lio shiver, demeaning and delectable as it was. He ended up biting his lip and closing his eyes against the flush of heat as Galo’s fingers traced his skin at the edge of life and cell death. He really _was_ messed up still; the Promare just wanted _cling, attach, unite_ , over and over again. Well, maybe that was what _he_ wanted to do. Sometimes it was hard to tell which way the thoughts were going when they were singing. Maybe he and they were one and the same, at this point.

Defeated by it all, Lio gave into the flush of heat blooming to life under his rescuer’s touch with a sigh. He tilted his head back pliantly as Galo’s two fingers slowly dragged up his throat, over his Adam’s Apple.

When they dragged off his chin and whispered away, a mournful noise escaped Lio’s lips. He stared at nothing for a moment until the edge of the bathtub came into focus again. The Promare were making funny noises, just sort of harmonizing with each other in tones that weren’t real-life notes, kind of the way synesthetes could see colors in their minds that didn’t exist in real life. Around him, they were manifesting physically, a foggy shimmer of color coating the tile walls.

His own Promare was quietly smoldering in his chest, just sort of taking in everything before deciding what to do, much like his aching heart. But it still felt like there was something wrong with it. Something discordant, and not quite controllable. Something that could devour him whole if he let it go on too long.

“You presume much, Galo Thymos,” he half warned, pulling back his _dark and mysterious leader_ voice in an attempt to wrap a familiar cloak of protection around himself. “And are quite forward in trying to get into my Burnish pants.”

He’d been hit by a jet spray of water that could’ve taken skin off if he weren’t wearing clothes. It did get him in the face a bit, mottling his jaw, but luckily the main brunt of it had been on his shirt and covered neck. It had been destructive enough to make him bleed, however, and a little bit of blood was still oozing from the worst spots when he touched it.

“Heh, well they _are_ the hottest of pants,” Galo chuckled light-heartedly, but when he spoke again, his voice was quiet and kind, dropping the act. “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine. Or if you don’t know. But...I’m a trained EMT, and I want to help Burnish too. It’d be worth knowing.”

Galo’s wandering fingers had turned to idly stroking up and down his arm. It warmed his skin enough that Galo was drawing a lava-colored line around his body that slowly faded after his touch, like a plane contrail. There was a buzz coming from Galo too, though, that Lio figured only he could hear.

After all, sound was just the same as color, which was a kind of radiation. They were all just waves vibrating through space. Anything that existed left a vibration, and Humans were particularly interesting, with their cellular energy and thought-waves bleeding a vibrant, ever-changing symphony into the matrix of existence around them.

In a drifting haze, Lio hummed the note the Promare were singing to him, and placed his palm over Galo’s fingers, stopping them. The sound transformed into control, but Lio was very aware that something was building from it, too. Something making his mind soft and muddled like a cloud had taken it over. He summoned his fire into his hand, only half aware that he was doing it. Slowly, _slowly,_ ever so slowly and gently, he called the power to manifest.

Galo waited patiently, and soon, Lio’s hand began to glow with warmth.

In complete silence, he placed the man’s hand against his face. Galo cupped his face naturally, even pushed into it protectively; Lio closed his eyes and leaned into it, swaying slightly as he held them there.

A human warmth. Complex and beautiful and oh so enticing. So many colors, tastes, smells this was. The Promare sang a heavenly tune, each one spinning to a precise harmony, and Lio let himself drift away into it.

Intent, Galo leaned near as well, arm tingling from the contact. The ember of Lio’s that lived latently in his chest suddenly made itself known, warming like a plate that’d been put in the oven for a while. The heat spread through his upper body pleasantly, and then flowed down his arm.

His hand began to glow to match Lio’s, and then the affected area of Lio’s skin did, too.

And then, right when the heat grew to the point that he thought he was going to have to pull away, Galo started to _hear_ things.

It was a humming, similar to a hive of bees, that slowly clarified into something like voices. They weren’t giggling; it was more like...the hum a person made when they were concerned about something, drawn into one long, long note that just kept vibrating, but which was coming from many different instruments. Almost like...a generator or an air conditioner.

In his mind’s eye, as he tried to see it, tastes and smells appeared, blooming and fading at random. Different parts of him tingled, too—a patch of his tongue, the side of a finger, one nerve at the back of his knee. But through it all, Galo felt drawn onward. _Deeper,_ toward the heat and the brightness of the force that was making that noise in the background of everything.

By the time he was breathing colors and felt like nothing more than a fiery, melty ball of consciousness floating through space, that attractive force clarified into something. A ball of light came into focus, like a distant star with a long disk of brightness around it at the plain of the ecliptic. Like a galaxy with glowering, spherical center.

But all around it, too, sat a web of lights—though each was in a bright, orangey space as well. Kind of like...one of those maps of city lights from the Earth at night, before the great meltdown that’d taken out most of civilization.

It reached out to him, coaxing, melding. About to say _something_ —

But then, all of it sudden, it and its warmth faded. The images rewound, the hold was released, and all of a sudden, Galo was back in his body, in the present, feeling oddly... _slow._

It was good he was leaning on the tub and sitting on the foot stool because he might have fallen over if not. His body was left with a painful cooling feeling and an extreme heaviness, one that made him emotionally reach out for whatever he had just been wrapped up in. He might have even made a sound of dismay at being denied it, though he wouldn’t want to admit it.

Whatever that had been, it was one hell of a drug.

Vaguely, he was aware of his hand being set down on the side of the bathtub. Lio’s rested over it steadily. He was small, so much smaller than him, but so much more _massive,_ somehow. His touch held more steadiness than a mountain in that moment.

Looking down, Galo found Lio watching him patiently. Galo’s brow furrowed, asking the question.

“The Promare Nexus,” he explained at a hush. “At least, that’s what we call it. I don’t know if that’s the real core of the Promare or just like, a visualization of the local cluster of Burnish on Earth that we can draw power from at any given point, but...you have to reach into that. It’s the only thing that can heal a Burnish—that nexus. It’s where the healing RNA is I guess, so to speak.”

“That was...” Galo was still frowning, feeling woozy and warm all over. “Powerful.”

Lio nodded sagely. “That’s why only a few people can use it. It’s kind of dangerous if you get lost in it.” He snapped his fingers and made a gesture like _“up it goes.”_

Galo sucked in a deep breath, feeling not nearly as steady as he should. He gazed at the hand unwrapped by the flesh-colored sleeve and flexed it. “But it was also...very pleasant, somehow?”

Lio agreed with a hum, sliding down into the ice until his head was barely above the ice and his knees emerged as twin volcanoes. “It feels like being held by someone you love.”

Somewhat unconsciously, he wrapped his arms around himself, sending ice tumbling in a loud cascade.

Galo stole exactly one glance at him before staring down at the lip of the tub.

“And I’m...” he asked softly, “...One of those people?”

Basking in the sweet resonance that flowed out from Galo, Lio smiled a defeated smile and placed his hand back over the big man’s, settling his fingers in the groves of his knuckles and out along the back of his hand. The touch was only lukewarm, and Galo suddenly didn’t know how to feel about that.

“You might be,” Lio whispered back. He turned away, strands of wet hair clinging to his neck. “But I haven’t been held by you yet. Not...like _that_.”

It felt like it took an eon to say, a near eternity to get a reply. But when he did, it came quietly, almost inaudibly. Neither of them were looking at each other.

Galo’s hand pulled away from his—and then held it between both of his own, a cascade of sheltering warmth enclosing him.

“Would you...like to be?”

Several things went through Lio’s mind right then. Shame, first and foremost, of needing such a thing. Then bitterness at all the reasons that had lead him to that type of life. And then, creeping in...something warm and gentle. Something that ached, that said he might just be worthy of that, might just be able to live in a world where a moment to himself with a lover was okay. Something that made him sigh warm air that wavered like a mirage in front of him.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Lio sent out a little wave of energy embedded with the idea of pulling this other star closer. But it seemed he didn’t need to, because Galo swooped in near and locked around him anyway, cupping his cheek.

The smell of him, the sight of him...for a moment Lio just basked in the information exchange of a touch that was about to turn into more of them. So many _more_ of them.

“I really like you, you know,” Galo admitted shyly, blue eyes flicking over Lio’s face and then eventually down into the ice. His thumb stroked Lio’s cheek, but Lio wasn’t sure how long it would last. Not wanting the hesitance he sensed to pull Galo back, the little lion pressed the man’s hand deeper into his face. The touch was electric, and Lio was vaguely aware that the defensive walls around his heart were melting alongside the ice around him.

But that in and of itself was a frightening, disharmonic thing, and as his heart racheted up, his Promare wobbled erratically on its axis, gathering fumes.

“Why?” Lio found himself asking in dread.

The leader of Mad Burnish tried very hard to project an image that he wasn’t the type of person to need reassurance, and generally it came from a place of truth. But his dirty little secret was, with this sort of thing, he did need it.

A swell of feeling came form his chest, and Lio sent it out like a radio wave toward his ember housed in Galo’s chest. Just like an antenna, it would pick up and amplify thoughts from one to the other, if either one of them decided to turn it on. Galo didn’t know how to, and it was a betrayal of trust to do it without him knowing, so Lio hadn’t used it on purpose before outside of emergencies. But this could fall under that heading, so he sent in the signal to trip it on.

 _Tell me the truth_ , he broadcast to it, and whether Galo felt it or not, he didn’t know—it was a one-way signal—but if it effected him, his face suddenly twisted as he said, “How could I not? You’re beautiful. Possibly the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Lio’s eyes flashed, and a cold ache trickled into him. “Is that all?”

“Of course not,” Galo said, nose crinkling. The transmitter shut off somehow, and Lio was left with no more information from the drift; only what his damnably human eyes and ears and intuition could tell him.

Much to his dismay, Galo pulled away, leaving another cooling spot in its wake. But one that he, perhaps, deserved.

Galo cupped both his hands in his lap, worrying them, and stared down at them resolutely. “You’re smart. Like, _really_ smart. Way smarter than me, but not weird-smart like Lucia is, you know? But you still explain things so well. You make time for me when I ask and don’t give me shit about it...”

Lio watched this confession with equal parts fascination and horror, not sure if he wanted to comfort him or yell at himself for causing the sadness there.

“Plus you’re insanely confident,” Galo hiccuped a chuckle, rubbing at his neck heavily. Still, he smiled a bit as he raised a hand and started narrating to the tile around the room, carefully looking anywhere but his conversation partner. “And, God, your _presence_ when you storm around a place and tell people off, too...! I’m such a sucker for leader types, though you’re a little more fiery—and a little more little—than I’m used to...”

A hot throb of feeling stabbed through Lio’s heart at that. He’d kiss him just for _that_.

“Plus...” Galo’s head dipped down again, as did his voice. “I like talking to you, and you’re easy to be around. Even when you’re upset, I feel like I can read you easier than I can read anyone else...”

Lio’s body heat was beginning to rise. The promare were beginning to sing and harmonize, a shrill note of triumph and glee and hope. Lio wasn’t sure he could stop himself from blazing if this went on.

“And you know?” Galo asked, staring at the wall and giving Lio a beautiful view of his jaw thereby, “You’re so _responsible_ , and _respectful_ , and clever. You’re a fighter like me, but _unlike_ me, you always know the right thing to say. I respect that, I want to _be_ like that. And unlike most of the guys I like, you...you’re an optimist that genuinely cares about people...”

“Galo,” Lio said abruptly, a note of alarm in his voice. Water was starting to steadily trickle around the protective landscape of ice.

“And you let me calm you down; you work with me on issues. You don’t like, just, shut me out the way some people do, or yell at me, or only humor me. And you play back when we idolize each other, in a way that’s just so sweet and adorable somehow? You look for someone to lean on when you need it and you let it be me. _Me_ , of all people. Do you know how long I’ve wanted to be worthy of that from someone as strong as you?...”

“ _Galo,_ ” Lio pleaded. There was much more liquid water now.

“And you’re cute,” Galo muttered, face totally hidden behind his hair as he stared down at his hands, clasped between his knees. “Really cute. Not like, girl cute, you know, but like...guy cute...”

Normally, Lio wouldn’t permit a word of that to be spoken without someone’s life being forfeit. But from Galo—buff jock Galo Thymos, Hero of the City, worrying his hands and bouncing one leg and unable to even look at him for fear of rejection or hurting his feelings—it was...dare he say, _endearing_.

Lio suddenly understood everything Meis and Guiera were on about with each other, when they decided to pull a “protective parents” move on him. The whole, _You’ll know a good love when you feel it, because it makes you want to be a better person for the partner. The person you never knew you could be but always_ hoped _you were, under there._

As Lio mulled over this essay of a confession and its implications with a heart suddenly thudding hard, a thought hit him. Not a magical thought from Galo, nor a divine thought from the Promare. It was just his own, plain and simple, no resonance or dissonance at all.

The thought was that he suddenly knew what his Promare was on about, why it was dragging in all the lolligaggers from the neighborhood into his ecosphere to bother him:

It was because Galo had the hots for him, too. And probably _had,_ for a while now.

For all the right reasons.

Maybe...just maybe—it was Lio getting pulled into _his_ orbit. And wouldn’t that be something...?

 _Though maybe,_ he considered, _the Promare are simply pushing us together, because they like the fire we will light._

But even if that was the case...when had the call of the fire ever sent him wrong?

“Hey, Mister Burning Rescue Hero,” Lio said, tilting his chin up. He leaned back in the tub, his chin resting on the back of one immaculately draped hand, one foot up on the far lip, the very picture of authoritative luxury. With what was still under the water, from Galo’s angle, he would’ve looked completely naked.

“Yes?” Galo asked, finally looking at him again with his bright, if embarrassed, attention. When he saw this, his eyes flashed. He sat a little straighter, and visibly swallowed hard.

Catching himself biting his lip unconsciously, Lio made a show of licking his lips. He unfurled a hand.

“You have captured the boss of the infamous Mad Burnish in your icy hold.” Lio had to concentrate far too hard to keep his fire in a ball in his gut, rather than racing out to every conduit it could find, but damn if he wouldn’t manage this show right. Galo deserved that much for his beautiful essay on Lio’s finer points, at least. “But he’s still a danger to you all until his flame is properly throttled into a manageable state. You know what would help him _not_ burn the world down again at this very moment?”

“What?” he asked very seriously, coming near.

Lio slid around the curve of the porcelain and laid a kiss at the edge of his lips.

He was soft. And tasted like oranges. Must have eaten one recently. It had been deliciously ripe.

He also still had that nice cologne drifting about him.

But most importantly, he didn’t pull away.

With the quiet sound of dripping water, Lio’s arm rose and he was vaguely surprised when he was allowed to grip the back of Galo’s shaved head and pull him near. He was even more surprised when two large hands slid over the sides of his scalp and cupped around the back of his own head, threading roughly through his hair and _pulling_. 

Lio moaned appreciatively into his mouth as his head was pulled back. The man was kissing him like he was fighting to claim ground first, and Lio didn’t mind the manhandling a bit. Galo’s arms quickly shifted so that one was holding him around the shoulder blades while the other molded into the divot of his spine and tangled into the back of his hair.

Finally, _finally,_ when his body temperature was starting to rise enough that the ice cubes were all fully melted and the water warming, Galo let him up for air. Lio shivered out a breath, little tendrils of smoke clogging his nose.

But he was not given a moment’s rest. His head tilted back at the ceiling as Galo went at his neck. He shuddered as lips pushed and pulled at his tender spots, half-dry hands gripping weakly into Galo’s far too sexy black shirt.

“Why am I so goddamned _attracted_ to you?” Galo huffed into his skin. If he was annoyed by it, he didn’t show it, instead nipping at him to punctuate the sentiment.

As he bent down further, Lio’s arm regripped into Galo’s hair. There was no traction in the round-edged bathtub, so even as he spread his legs for balance, all that happened was he got pushed further and further down.

Lio desperately hoped the attraction wasn’t _that—_ the pull of his Promare gravity. But his head was so fuzzy he couldn’t tell. It didn’t work on non-Burnish, did it? Even with Lio’s ember inside him? He could coax a thought or two out of him at times, but he didn’t _think_ the whole gravity thing was involved here, so...

“I don’t know but I feel the same way,” he purred, and with a burst of energy, evaporated the water in the bathrub in a rush. Galo sheltered his head against Lio’s neck while it happened, then lifted away just enough to survey what he’d done.

Breathing hard, Galo looked his firefly’s face up and down. As well as the remainder of the bruise on his body, which he didn’t want to heal quite yet. With glittering eyes, Lio swiped a finger down Galo’s bare arm, lighting a trail of sparks off his skin and then a flame at the tip of his finger like a match.

“You _brat_ ,” Galo yelped, “Please stop lighting fires with my body!”

“Make me,” Lio quipped, winking at him. “You ‘coming’ to ‘put me out,’ or not?”

“Ah, shit.” Galo ran a ragged hand through his hair, sounding out of breath. His eyes lingered on Lio’s body. “ _Fuck,_ you’re hot...”

“Burning for you,” Lio agreed, in a way that sounded more than a little threatening. “Now get in here.”

“I’m so getting fired,” he sighed, disengaging only to stand up and pull off his shirt. It was an impressively raw move, done fast and harsh. Lio wanted to _be_ that shirt, getting used and discarded as soon as all that power was done with him.

“Shut up, you’re saving the world. From _me_.”

“I hate when you’re right,” Galo hissed back at him, pulling off his socks and shoes. He flung them aside with a clatter, and just as he went for his belt, Lio held up a hand.

“Wait.”

Galo stilled, but only slightly. “Ah?”

“Keep that on.”

“Oh... _oh?_ ”

Lio nodded. “Just follow my lead.” He curled his hand down and Galo almost felt compelled to comply. Belt buckled again, he followed the gesture, one leg and then another heading into the large clawfoot. He ripped the curtain closed and all but dove onto his hands and knees around Lio.

He did, however, take a few seconds to enjoy the view, holding onto the wall. He hadn’t been with a smaller partner before; it was glorious in an entirely different way. “Damn.”

Lio laughed and pulled him down. “God, my Promare are so horny right now, it’s bullshit.”

“How can interdimensional non-physical creatures be horny?”

“I dunno but they seem to have found that ganglion of my brain and like stroking it to get me hot and bothered, it’s so _rude_ ,” he muttered. “My resonance is so unstable right now.”

“Your _science_ talk is hot,” Galo noted, pulling a few kisses up from Lio as Galo crouched on his knees around him. Lio met every one willingly, pliable to whichever direction Galo wanted to turn him and giving him delectable little hitches of breath and clutching fingers for it. Every time Lio touched his skin, sparks went off, tiny shooting stars dimming against the side of the porcelain.

“You want me...to rattle off physics formulas to you?” Lio whispered, heady. “I could read you the manual on how those goddamned warp gates work.”

“Why—would I want to hear about that when I’m _kissing_ you?” Galo asked in exasperation, planting a hand on Lio’s chest and making a show of brushing his mane of hair over to one side of his head.

“I really don’t _know_ ,” Lio muttered, kind of whined really, his brow furrowed and legs shifting instinctively to welcome the man down. His free hand wrapped around Galo’s wrist, bursting low-level flames to life. It didn’t hurt, thanks to Lio’s flame locked in his chest keeping him safe, and Galo stared at it with some dissonance for a second before he realized Lio wasn’t doing it on purpose. “They keep making random synapses fire, I can’t stand this, please just do whatever you want to me, I hate this, I feel like I’m losing my goddamned _mind._ ”

Galo had had many daydreams in his life along the lines of _My hero, please save me,_ followed by, _As thanks, do whatever filthy thing you want with me_ , and _man_ , that was not helping things here.

He had also had a few dreams of _Lio_ saying that, and... _shit_.

 _Dreams_ do _come true._

Things were moving kind of fast for his tastes, but honestly, he wasn’t the kind of guy who said no to orders and those in need, either. Not when they were one in the same, and not with a partner this willing and attractive who’d stormed into his life and of whom he’d been pining for ever since.

“You make a convincing case,” Galo rattled off, and leaned forward. There was plenty of room for them, but his knees were going to hate him tomorrow regardless. “I’m going to save you and put out this raging fire too, don’t worry.”

“Thank youuu,” Lio hissed as Galo’s head dipped under his and sucked on the soft spots under his jaw. His strong hands slid up Lio’s sides, up his ribs, heavy like a dancer’s hold. They pinched at his nipples, _hard_ , and he was both grateful and a little surprised some kind of flame didn’t express out of them. Well, that was two valves of this firetrap shut. “Tell anyone about this and you’re _dead_ , do you hear me?” Lio added.

“Hmm hm.” While he absolutely believed he would do it, Galo took the chance and hummed dismissively as he sucked hard down the main muscle in Lio’s slender neck. “Do you threaten everyone you fuck, or just the people who help you out?”

“Oh fuck you,” Lio hissed, but it was half hearted. A hand attached to his ribs like something was pulling them together, and a jet of molten flame shot off behind him for a hot second—again not breaking the protective barrier Lio had instilled within him. It wasn’t jagged though; it was smooth and rippled like bending tar, waving off Galo’s side like flames on a gas grill.

“Oh you _will_ ,” Galo promised, grabbing Lio’s offending wrist and planting it heavily against the porcelain, like a super-magnet to a fridge. 

Hands on each side of the tub, Lio, complete with little flames reflecting deep in his eyes, surged up and growled into Galo’s mouth, stealing a demanding series of hot, smoke-tasting kisses. Galo, naturally more powerful than he was (flames not included) and on the uphill as well, used both hands to push himself down into Lio’s kiss. It was passionate and heavy and inflamed and would leave his lips cut and bruised, but god damn if it wasn’t _amazing_ when Lio finally broke in a hiss and fell back down into the tub, a rush of hot air flipping up around him and flames and sparks and smoke flickering out of his mouth. The curtain rattled violently.

“You little _beast_ ,” Galo laughed triumphantly, only to realize where he was and squeak, “ _Why_ do you want me to _kiss_ you, it seems to be making you _worse_?!”

“I need to hyperburn, like we did with the planet, or they’re going to eat me _alive_.”

Lio wasn’t sure what was going on with him entirely, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out the basics: The Promare liked to solve the instability of one of their number by calling the others to harmonize around it, thus forming a hyperburn until all of them were set right again.

He himself was oscillating unstably, his Promare winding up with each injection of adrenaline and hormone and patching through to the colony’s power for the effort. Its alarm signal was causing the fire of an entire star to rain down upon Lio’s magnetic field, as it were, and further stripping away his atmosphere of self-control and destabilizing his resonance. It would only be so long before the overloaded magnetic field twisted, broke, and flared, taking everything around him with it. Possibly him, too.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t like he could just run to the wastes or some body of water and burn off like people used to. He was in the middle of the city, in the middle of a building, with waves of starfire slamming into his mind, his soul, and erupting his body.

So instead, he needed another body or two to help discharge the energy—or to simply give in to what his treacherous human body wanted, forcing the Promare to map a positive interpretation to the sensation and subsequently calm the fuck down every time he looked at Galo.

He had to burn off his manic, chemically excited state and repair his Promare before he could ever hope to stop the disharmony. Unfortunately, it required Galo to do it.

Luckily, Galo seemed willing, blessed star that he was.

“Is that normal for a Burnish?” the Hero of the City asked in a continued mix of excitement and distress, clearing mapping his inroad through the fire that was Lio’s inferno as he hovered above him.

“I don’t _know_ , Galo Thymos, you sweet disaster of a person! _Please,_ just come _here_ and _touch me_ ,” Lio pleaded, more to the world than to him, his voice pitching up and growling and words spilling out faster and faster. “My resonance is so fucked, the Promare just want to burn and I really don’t want to burn the city down and since it’s you and your goddamned virile balls-to-the-wall that’s stoking my fires, you’re the only one who can save us all.”

This, indeed, appeared to be the right thing to plead to the judge, because Galo’s eyes flashed, and a deep breath sucked into his lungs. “Well then!” he puffed, all concern thrown off. “All right. Change your flame color if you don’t like what I do, or something.”

“Asshole if I could control something like that right now I wouldn’t _need_ this,” Lio grumbled, but as Galo braced a hand _on his throat,_ ran his nose down Lio’s front, and licked over his belly button while he unzipped his fly, the leader of the Mad Burnish’s protests melted away into the magma that was the rest of his body. “O-oh,” he shuddered, temperature rising, “Oh, that’s _good_.”

Galo hummed darkly and, swirling his tongue once into Lio’s bellybutton, nipped at the skin just above it before undoing Lio’s belt with one hand. It was harsh and seedy, promising a man that took what he wanted, and Lio tipped his head back, keening a feral sound. It wasn’t a normal sound—it was part scream, part whine, part guttering fire, and—

“Holy shit, was that the Promare?” Galo asked, hand leaving its spot at his throat slowly, like flame might manage to reach out of Lio’s very pores and burn him if he moved too fast. It sounded like some movie effect sound, like shrieking metal and warping space grating together.

Lio’s head was tipped back. A ghostly light flickered in the cavity of his open mouth until it went dark, like it was glowing somewhere in his esophogus. His eyes looked glazed, and his thin, bruised chest (nips and bites included) heaved. “I don’t know what just happened,” Lio stated between dizzy breaths. “I might _die_ today.”

“Not if I can help it,” Galo reminded him. “I’m saving you, remember? Stop letting the Promare use you like a Stargate. I will put something _in_ that mouth if you can’t control it.”

A few more breaths went by, and then Lio suddenly glared down at Galo, furiously intent lavender eyes _glowing_. “ _More_.”

Galo took Lio’s hands, gripping the tub rather hard, in one hand and crossed his wrists over his head. That part of the tub was up against the wall, and as Lio’s skin touched the cold tile, it not only steamed all the condensation off the tile, but his flames grew and condensed around his wrists, under Galo’s hand, into sleek, purple-black crystalline metal. It molded to the wall like a ball of spider’s silk.

A low whistle slid out of Galo as he let go, impressed. Lio, leaning back, his arms bound above his head, gazed down at him with a coldness that actually made him shiver. 

“Good idea,” he praised in his commander’s tone. “Shoulda done this in the first place to myself.”

Galo’s mind boggled. That was not what he was expecting to hear with that look. But Lio was sitting, slouched, like he had in his sky throne, his legs splayed, and...

Wasn’t that a trip—the boss of the infamous fire-based terrorist group, the boss he had fought in a damn mech _against_ and _with_ the other day—letting him go down on him _bound and obedient_.

Feeling his pants tighten sharply, Galo hissed as he ran a soothing hand down Lio’s front before dipping his head down. Lio’s legs hooked over his shoulders, ankles crossing at his back. A few sparks went off, followed by a few pink and blue triangles spinning into the distant tile like water-skipping rocks.

He lipped at Lio’s hot and rock-hard cock through his boxers, which somehow had not burned off yet, sliding up and down once to see how reacted.

The man gave a luxurious groan, and his toes curled. His hands flexed, his biceps bulged, and he pushed up into Galo’s ministrations. He squeezed his balls against his chin through the fabric.

“Hang on now. If you can’t control yourself, you won’t get any more,” Galo chuckled, pressing Lio’s hips down with one hand. He laid the heel of his other on the base of his upturned erection. Looking him in the eyes, he stroked his hand up and down the shaft, hard. Lio whimpered, and knocked his head back on his arms.

“ _Galo_ ,” he whined.

“Yessss?” he asked, never stopping as he pulled Lio's clothes down, and enjoying the view all the while.

“Ah, fuck, that’s good," he swore when skin touched skin. "That’s what I need, please don’t stop...”

Galo blushed a little but hid it in a chuckle to himself. He took Lio’s cock in his palm, stroking up and down the sides. He tried to ignore the little sparks going off their contact, but it was actually rather fun to make them happen.

“I didn’t think you’d be like this. Subservient.”

Lio’s mouth shuddered open. He hissed, waves of heat shimmering the air in front of him. He didn’t say anything; he just kept hissing and shuddering. He was either damn sensitive or something strange was going on; his whole body was shaking with noticeable tremors.

“What are the Promare saying?” Galo asked, as Lio started breathing more shallowly. He was staring up at the ceiling with hazy eyes, with _flickering_ eyes, and it wasn’t because his eyes were moving back and forth.

“I...” Lio whispered, dreamy. “A’...”

Fragments of sounds started coming out of his throat. It sounded almost like radio static.

In fact—strange glimpses of things were suddenly appearing in Galo’s head.

It was an answer, he realized with some surprise. It was white, white hot molten background that looked a lot like those maps of the universe’s background radiation, and then in it clarified glimpses of things. Colors, really, that were resounding in his mind—his soul?—with emotions attached to them based on the way they acted. They danced around, triangles of all sorts of colors dancing through his vision too, changing color as they changed emotion. Happy, excited, confused and—

 _Agitated_ was what it clarified into, and his stomach clenched.

Sounds came a beat later, like the standing chimes in an orchestra, going off here, there, everywhere around him in all different notes and sending him shockwaves of discordant feeling with it. They were bright and clear at first, but then they bent, becoming heavier, deeper, angrier, more alarmed. The harmony twisted as other chords went off in clumps here and there, creating a muddy mess of grinding cacophonies.

Galo focused on Lio, on sliding a hand up and down his leg to steady him. It sent a wave of sound along, much like a set of musical windchimes being stroked from one end to the other. The rest of the noise followed it, trying to match it, but breaking off in a shower of colors that were neon-bright in spots.

Concerned, Galo stopped moving altogether, and simply held him where his hands lay.

_Pain, suffering._

“Don’t stop,” Lio moaned, voice ragged. “I need this.”

He wasn’t sure he’d actually heard his voice or simply felt it. But either way, Galo did as told, regripping Lio’s hardened shaft and taking special care to manipulate just under and over the head. Lio gave off a pained note of shock and arched his back, fingers grasping for purchase where they were tied. His skin was flickering between hot and cold, super heated and cool; it was disorienting because both came across to Galo as pain.

And the Promare—he could feel something warping in the space around them. Something massive, buffeting him like wind, that sounded like a cross between a scream and a growl. It sounded like the language of a conflagration, when fires moved so much air that they started to sound like they were moaning demons.

_Want, need._

Lio’s breath hitched up, and eventually got lost entirely in silent convulsions. The Promare, too, starting singing one long, harmonic chord, spinning into the tornado of ash and flame.

_Hurt. Help._

_Release._

Against Galo’s ministrations, Lio’s body raised up and clenched, his entire frame going burningly hot.

_Flare._

_flArE_

_FLARE_

All of a sudden, reality came back to Galo’s eyes, and he gripped Lio with a start as white spurted out over his hand and into the air. Pink, blue, and green flames shot out of Lio’s hands _and his feet,_ creating a geometric pattern of concentric, elongated rings over the floor. With a roar, they filled the room, climbing the walls in an instant and meeting up at the ceiling—where they suddenly crystalized into that familiar black-purple metal as they did so.

The sound of it was incredible. There roar of the flame, for one, but the crackle of the crystal, too, and then a few booms from plasmatic lightening reaching out to the metal fixtures in the room. Even the Promare got in on it, sounding like someone had chucked the backyard wind chime from hell down a stairwell.

Very aware that that could have been his head getting melted and refined into Promatelite glass, Galo stared at their new stalactite chandelier for a moment, speechless.

“We might actually die,” he swore.

Obviously, he didn’t want to die yet in his short life (and even shorter hero career), but death by ill-advised but very good sex was on his list of top five ways to do it, to be honest.

The other Burnish would kill him for failing to save Lio though, and that probably wasn’t the end Lio was gunning for. His boss, too, would never live down the question of how two people ended up as ash in his bathtub. Best to check in on Lio’s condition—

“No we won’t,” Lio groaned, suddenly back to his mortal coil at least a little bit. He was sweating, body flushed and mottled red, but human nonetheless. “This is helping.” Melting his restraints away back into flame, he ran a ragged hand through his bangs, and then just collapsed back onto whatever part of the tub was there to support him.

“This is _helping?_ ” Galo asked, scandalized. He still held Lio’s erection, and worked the last few droplets out of the pipes—careful not to aim it at himself.

“Yes,” Lio hissed, tensing against another quake through his body. “Ah fuck, sorry, thank you... But don’t worry, I won’t let these bastards burn you. You’re too precious.”

Galo blushed so hard he forgot what he was doing.

“So I’m not...going to get incinerated if I go down on you someday? Because I like you man, but I really don’t want to die that way.”

“You chicken?” Lio challenged, leaning against the rim of the bathtub such that Galo could only see the underside of his jaw—and the hickies there.

“..................No,” Galo articulated slowly, leaving Lio’s softening erection to stroke a soothing hand down his body. “But I _am_ a _professional_ life-saver and we don’t take unnecessary risks.”

“Hmmm.” Still panting hard, Lio ran an uncoordinated hand over his jaw, as if there were stubble there. It was a beautiful sight, and Galo wanted every inch of that body to be convulsing from his cock and crying his name...provided it wouldn’t actually kill him.

“Galo Thymos, are you asking me if my dick shoots flames?” Lio decided on at last.

“..................Yes.”

Lio laughed, a sick, sick laugh that devolved into sounds of pain that Galo very much wanted to kiss away. “Christ, at this point, I don’t know. It never has before unless we lit our piss on fire for the hell of it.”

That...was way more than Galo wanted to know about the Mad Burnish boys.

“Don’t judge me,” Lio growled.

“No sir,” Galo said before he could think better of it. Lio’s eyes flashed hungrily at him.

“What did you just call me?” he breathed.

They locked gazes.

“Nothing. Ah...here. Um—” Blushing, Galo made to stand.

Lio reached out and caught his wrist—after an attempt or two. “Don’t leave. Stay with me,” he asked at a whisper.

“Oh, I, um...”

“I still need you next to me.”

“No, it’s just...this kinda burns and keeps getting warmer somehow?”

He motioned to his hand. Red, angry marks were appearing around the ejaculate.

“Oh...sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Galo hummed and reached for one of his own socks. He wiped the come off, and just as he tossed his sock back onto the floor, it burst into flames. Galo gasped.

He quickly flipped it over and patted it out, but damn if he didn’t feel bad about that. He’d have to clean up for everyone...

“I’m so getting fired,” he sighed, wilting over the tub’s edge.

Lio, though, sated and boneless, pulled Galo over. He went willingly, and soon found himself pressed into his body.

His skin was still very, very hot and convulsing here and there in a way that wasn’t normal at all. Galo curled around him, instinctively holding him in the best mimicry of a human blanket that he could.

Lio’s heart was beating rapidly, like he’d just finished a sprint. Around them, Galo couldn’t hear or see any Promare. He wondered what Lio was feeling.

“What are the Promare saying?” he asked, listening to Lio’s breathing.

“Nothing,” Lio stated between gasps, “And it’s wonderful.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for all the nice comments! It's been really fun having so many messages in my inbox. Sorry I suck at writing erotica. >_< Galo will get his reward in the next chapter...


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you read between the lines, you'll catch a whiff of the things _a certain someone_ used to say to Galo, coming out of Galo's mouth...
> 
> This isn't like, good or anything, and way more energetic than the stuff I normally write, but hey, I tried. The holidays probably aren't the best time for something celebratory in tone but...you're here. I'm here. Let's do this stellar dance!

Still in the bathtub, laying against each other, Lio was idly stroking his fingers over Galo’s shaved scalp.

“What...did I just do, exactly?” Galo wondered breathlessly after a bit. He kissed into the soft divot where Lio’s throat met his collar bone.

“I think...” Lio’s breath was still heavy and tired. “My magnetic field ripped. Or at least, my resonance with my Promare did. Some density of other Promare had to reset it.”

“Do people...have...magnetic fields?”

“Yes? Every polarized electric current gives off one. They’re just very weak. But...”

The Prime thing. That couldn’t have helped.

“Mine is...particularly powerful, because of the Promare. Whether it’s actual magnetism or like, my resonance with the fire.”

Galo wasn’t following much of this, but he held Lio anyway as the man flipped him around and then snuggled up against him. Stroked an idle hand down his back as he gazed at the alien crystals on the ceiling, reaching down like claws.

“But now my Promare can recognize what I feel for you as excitement, not a threat!”

Just as Galo was about to open his mouth about that, a loud, booming knock came at the door.

 _“Are you all right in there?”_ yelled a voice. Varys’s.

 _“I’ve got an extinguisher!”_ Aina’s voice added.

 _“Is anyone dead?!”_ This, courtesy of Lucia.

 _Oh dear Lord, were they listening this whole time?_ Galo struggled up to a sitting position and leaned toward the door, which luckily was quite far away.

“Yup! I have it under control, _don’t come in!!_ ” he shouted back, in what had to be the most obvious thing they’d ever heard.

Hopefully, if they didn’t get the idea and do him a solid, they’d just figure it was an exorcism occurring in here.

 _“Are you sure?”_ Aina asked.

“Yes, very!”

“He’s fine—!” Lio added. “I’m fine too! ...Mostly!”

Galo gazed at him incredulously for a moment. Lio had the same unappreciative look on his face.

 _“Call for help if you need us!”_ Varys said.

“Will do!” Galo said, even more intently.

 _“Don’t die!”_ Lucia shouted. _“We like our Galos with all their pieces!”_

“Roger that...!”

Suddenly, one of the showers turned on, obscuring anything else they might have said. And then another. It was cold water running, he could tell from the lack of steam and the slightly heavier sound of it. Galo whipped his head around to Lio.

He was manipulating two fingers, a lazy smile on his face. “Privacy is important for trysts,” he said.

“Is that all I am to you? A tryst?” Galo muttered blackly. Or at least, as black as Galo ever got, which was a pretty creamy latte.

“No, you’re my Burning Rescue _hero_ ,” Lio stated with _almost_ no sarcasm, and Galo went both burningly hard and red-faced at the same time. On top of the radiator heat, with all the energy Lio had been letting off, it was quite warm in the room. Standing up carefully in the jet tub, he reached down and readjusted himself, and then put a hand to his face to hide the _so getting fired_ written there.

“See now, here’s the thing about the leader of Mad Burnish,” Lio began, rising to his knees at Galo’s feet. “He never lets his men go unsatisfied if he has something to give, nor does he leave his allies unrewarded.”

Galo’s eyes flashed as Lio situated between his legs. “Please keep your pants on,” he stated. “While you give it to me.”

 _Give it to me_. Galo could have fainted.

Instead, he gripped a fistful of Lio’s hair and guided his face upward. Not unkindly, but he would have certainly felt it. “It’s...okay?” Galo shuddered, as Lio’s mouth somewhat magnetically found the outline of his erection which—okay, goddamn, was sensitive like it’d been blissfully shocked. “To grip...your— _ahn_ — hair... _right_?”

“Mmmmnhn,” Lio agreed deep in his throat, never even opening his eyes.

“Ah shit, you’ve done this before,” Galo groaned. “Good boy. Man. Ah, sorry.”

Lio put a calming hand on his leg. “Hah. No, I just have a collective memory of all the Burnish who have ever given blowjobs.”

“What? Really?” Galo gawked.

“Hah, no, I’m kidding. It doesn’t work like that.” _Unless we dream together_. “I’ve got some practice.”

Lio, less acerbic than usual, was patient as Galo unzipped his fly and pulled himself out. Lio pushed down the fabric of Galo’s boxers down his sculpted thighs and made an appreciative noise as he dragged his tongue up one side of the man’s cock and down the other. With a happy hum, he introduced the hot, tight wetness of his mouth to the salty tip.

Lio was, frankly, a beautiful piece of humanity in more ways than one, but especially in the looks department. Galo had tried hard to be a buff piece of manly meat, but he never felt he was all that more attractive than the average fit guy with a job. That meant smart, well-bred, powerful men were out of his league, and he forget the dream entirely if they were more than average in looks.

But Lio. _Lio_ looked like a goddamned beautiful work of _art_ and he was sharpened sword at the same time _._ He was a wild thing from primordial times, and— _he had the boss of Mad Burnish between his legs sucking him off, oh fuck_.

Galo groaned into the pleasure of it, closing his eyes and pushing Lio into his cock and trying not to come too soon. He hissed; he bit his lip and pushed his brows together; his gluts pushed together like iron and somehow, some goddamned how, Lio managed to go down his whole length when he pushed him down, and then _stayed there,_ spit dripping out his mouth.

Not burning out. Not steaming. Just dripping, like a normal human being. He really was cooling down.

Lio tugged backward a bit, a Galo let him go. He coughed, took a breath, wiped at his mouth...and then, like that, at the bottom of the tub, gazed up at him with his big lavender eyes and pretty face.

The image hit Galo hard. He’d never seen _vulnerable_ like that, let alone on Lio. He’d seen scared- and-witless-vulnerable on people he’d rescued from fires and their family members, but not subservient-vulnerable. That’d always been _him._

He stroked over Lio’s hair, his hand reaching out of its own accord.

“You’re impressive.”

 _He_ had said that to Galo often, but when it came out of his mouth now, it was so much _warmer_.

Lio chuckled once, gazing off, some funny thing flitting through his head. It painted a pretty picture on him—wicked and unknowable and utterly his.

A wave of dizziness hit Galo, and he gripped the wall for support. “Ah, I think this is...going to my head.”

Lio’s eyes flicked down to Galo’s still-hard cock. Then, Lio’s wickedly intelligent lavender eyes flicked up to him, threatening.

“Poor mortal,” he whispered, grinning.

With that, Lio, on his knees with hands splayed delicately between them, took him in his mouth again, sucking _hard_ in long strokes and oh... _oh shit,_ his mouth was getting hotter than it should.

“Oh, oh _fuck_. Ah, man...” Galo bit into his own forearm, trying to keep himself from making noise.

“What’s my name,” Lio stated, pulling off his heavy cock and resting it against his face.

“Lio,” he groaned, breath hitching and hand stroking over his blond head.

“And what’d you call me earlier,” Lio amended, kissing the tip and then stroking the shaft with a hand. His limber wrist flicked, and he started working Galo more quickly, the pad of his thumb pressing into just the right spot under the ridge of the head over and over.

“S...sir?” he asked, a little fuzzy on the details and shaky in his voice. His legs were quivering.

Lio raised his eyebrows in a _ding ding_ sort of gesture, and then suddenly stopped everything he was doing.

Galo grimaced, a noise of unfairness in the back of his throat. He gripped the edge of the tub for support. It was a good thing these things were 500 pounds of iron and ceramic because damn was he leaning into it hard.

“Say it,” Lio said as he squeezed him painfully, “ _hero_.”

A prouder man might have told him to quit being an asshole unless he wanted that part to get fucked raw, but Galo was not that man in this moment. He was just a weak-willed little grunt that was perfectly okay with that if it got him off.

“Ah, Lio, _sir,_ ” he panted, “please don’t leave me hanging.”

Lio grinned to himself and went back down on him, mouth _so goddamned gloriously hot_ and now, with a hand on the base, bobbing quickly along the top half. His tongue did this _thing_ that was massaging the underside of his cock and—

“Ah, _ah_ , Lio, don’t stop, _dontstop_ ,” Galo swore raggedly, gripping the back of his blond hair with a vengeance and twisting it.

Lio grimaced but he didn’t stop. He just kept going, creating the waves, his otherworldly heat moving into his hands now too. A strange emotion welled up into Galo, one that he wasn’t sure was his but resonated with him anyway that he quickly got lost in. It radiated throughout his whole body: A feeling of contentment and pleasure at being _used_ and—

Galo came with a cross between a shout and a shiver, his whole body going taught and then quivering into jelly with a hiss. He held Lio tightly to him, forced him next to him as far as he could go, white flaring to life behind his own eyes.

“ _Ahnnnn_ ,” Galo groaned into the thrumming feelings coursing through his body. “ _Hmmn_.... _hnnng_... _ah_ —ack!”

Galo got his eyes to focus in relatively few seconds through sheer force of will, and suddenly remembered that Lio was there, not quite able to breathe.

“Ah, sorry, sorry,” he said as if he’d been burned, pulling him off quickly. Lio was turned away limply, a waterfall of spit cascading out of his mouth.“I should have asked, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry...”

His gut clenched, remembering certain people, certain things. Lio wasn’t heaving, but he wasn’t looking at him, either. He was just staring at the edge of the porcelain dully, letting everything drip down by his knees.

Eventually, Lio--thin, bony back turned away from him--moved.

A hand rose, waving to calm Galo's fears. He pulled the last of the spit from his mouth with slow composure—it was a little viscous, so he actually had to—and then hung his head. He wiped his lips one more time with the back of his hand while his shoulders shuddered.

Galo’s stomach dropped—until it became clear that he was _laughing_.

Lio suddenly turned to Galo with a deep smile and panting breaths. “That was fun! God, I feel so much better, the Promare are finally reset and satisfied my feelings for you aren’t indicative of a threat!”

“O-oh. Good?” Galo slumped against the edge of the bathtub, feeling numb and vaguely aware he’d just been complimented...sort of. Still, a confession was a confession, and he finally rallied with a deep and unsteady breath. “Yeah, yeah—good!”

“Very good. And anyway, worry not,” Lio stated with a shrug. “You are not the first person to come down my throat without asking. I don’t really mind it so long as it’s far down there enough I don’t taste it. Better than the alternative actually. I was always a picky eater.”

He grinned and when Galo was still feeling a bit faint, winked at him.

“Ho...oh. Oh good?” Galo said, holding at his heart.

“And with the way you were going, you’d probably hit my eye if you pulled out. That stings you know, and there’s no shampoo here.”

Galo did know. But...

“So you’re happy? Really? You’re not mad?”

“What, about a little thing like that? No.” He shook his head. “I thought I was gonna die an hour ago and take out half the city with me. I can ignore something like giving you so much pleasure you forgot where you were for a minute. I’m not that fragile, despite how I look.”

 _I’m not so indestructible as all that_. Galo wished _he’d_ known that, back when. _He’d_ never been gentle _enough_.

Lio yawned, much like the cats he was named after. He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “You like being rough, doncha.”

Galo swallowed hard. He supposed he did.

“I liked it.”

Lio grinned. He wasn’t looking at anything in particular, just some far off thing in his mind.

“We really are compatible.”

As the shame and fear melted away into realization, Galo tilted his head. “What?”

Lio shook his head and waved at him, another one of his boyish smiles on his face as he sat naked at the bottom of the station bathtub. “The Promare are a handful at times but the flames never lead a person astray,” he explained. “Try to enjoy your orgasm a little, I’m not mad. Really. _Relax_.”

When Galo looked less than convinced, Lio added, “Here, I’ll prove it to you.”

He came forward on his hands and knees and coaxed Galo down. Galo went, back molded to the curve on the short side of the tub, and Lio curled up against him, gently warming him. He kicked off the rest of his clothes, and snuggled in.

They stayed like that for a bit, both of them breathing hard and Galo wondering what, exactly, had just happened.

_He really doesn’t mind._

_He’s totally fine with mistakes._

_He just admitted he had feelings for me..._

_Well, I guess I did just save his life..._ _I think?_

“You seem a little better,” Galo said, his mind unwinding as he laid a hand over Lio’s naked shoulders.

“I’m getting tired,” he explained, as Galo enjoyed the view of his back, curled up between his legs. He always felt so damn _manly,_ with someone there.

“I thought Burnish couldn’t get tired? Cuz of the Promare regenerating them?”

“It’s...complicated,” Lio noted. “We get hungry, we get tired. It’s all about equilibrium. The regen thing only occurs when we burn. But those starquakes a bit ago are rough on a person.”

“What’s a...starquake?’ Galo asked, as he petted his hair, his shoulder. Lio seemed happy to mold into him, pushing as many square inches of them together as they possibly could. He was shivering, but not from cold—from fatigue.

Lio was still ridiculously hot, and Galo molded his own back into the porcelain curve to cool down. Porcelain was endothermic, and the bathtub had a lot more surface area than just the part he took up that could be used to diffuse his heat into, so no matter how long he lay there, it’d only get so warm—unless Lio roasted them first.

“Exactly what it sounds like. A quake that runs through a layer of a star, when the magnetic field snaps and disrupts, sending out a solar flare. The flares send molten plasma along the magnetic field, or out in space if it’s violent enough, and the quake ripples around the loosely connected molecules of the star. Stars are so huge that the equator and the poles rotate at totally different amounts of days, and so the magnetic field will eventually get twisted so far around itself that it snaps and resets. This happens with our sun every...twelve years or so, I think? That’s what causes the solar flare cycle.”

“Wow...”

“Yeah, stars are weird things, they’re basically liquid but have layers like a gas. There’s actually tons of room in some layers of the star, and basically no room in the innermost layers, where fusion occurs. That’s why it takes a beam of light 10,000 years to escape to the outer layers of a star, but only about two minutes to leave the outer layer, and eight hours to get to the end of the solar system.”

Galo went silent, fingers idly stroking through Lio’s hair. Lio wasn’t sure if that meant the man was thinking or trying to find a way to mask what he couldn’t comprehend.

“...Wow,” Galo settled on.

“Yes.” Lio wrapped his his hands around Galo’s back and, resting his chin on his shoulder, started kissing into his neck quietly. “I can believe a thing could live in the outer layer of a star. I could also believe that something in an inner layer would have to create a warp to get out of it with any speed.”

Galo closed his eyes and accepted the attention, idly running a hand up and down Lio’s side. “Do you think there’s a chance Burnish irradiate people? Cuz their flames are nuclear? Nobody told us about that, but that seems like the kind of thing the government wouldn’t tell people to keep the public calm.”

The kisses stopped. “You just now thought of that?”

“...Yes. I’m not an X-ray tech for a reason.”

“Well, Galo Thymos, I’m not sure, but heavy industry scientists aren’t dead yet so I guess it’s okay.”

He shrugged. Pulled back and looked Galo in the eyes. Galo smiled.

And then he yawned again. “The Promare finally shut up. I need a nap.”

“I do too.”

“If we sleep here, you might get hypothermia.”

“I think if I’ve learned anything from today, it’s that you _need_ hypothermia sometimes.”

“Maybe.” Lio shrugged. “Christ, I’m going to fall asleep here if I’m not careful and get you fired. C’mon.” He forced himself to stand, and very carefully extricated himself from the tub. He helped Galo out as well, and then turned on the hot water of the showers that were still running. While Galo shrugged out of his pants, Lio closed the second shower off.

“You saved the day, Hero of the City,” Lio said with a fond playfulness. “Come get your reward.”

“A blowjob isn’t enough for you?”

“Should it be enough for _you_?”

“You’re such trouble.” Galo shook his head with a smile, and came over all the same.

“I like you,” Lio said simply. “And you can handle me. That’s...rare.”

Lio blushed as he grabbed at the nearby bar of soap. God, he was so tired. He was letting all his secrets loose at this point.

“Hm,” Galo said, molding into his back. “You make a good little-spoon.”

Lio smiled, scritching at the man’s cheek. “Maybe I’ll let you pull my hair again sometime, huh?”

“Yes please,” Galo said, nibbling at his neck.

The little compliments continued like that, all throughout the short, exhausted, uninterrupted shower.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> /continues hiding
> 
> Nothing to see here, just plot and a nice, gooey ending. <3
> 
> Thanks for reading my first foray into this fandom's Paladin-Himbo/Tsundere-Fire-Twink/Thirsty-Alien-Star lovely mess!

“In the mech,” Lio began lowly as he dried off with a towel, half turned away from Galo, “Did you feel anything?”

“Oh...like, in the Lio de Galon?” he asked. “That was amazing transfiguration by the way.”

“Th-thank you,” Lio murmured, eyes lingering on the shape of Galo drying off. “See, you _can_ talk science.”

“Hah! Sometimes." He beamed that bright smile of his. "So long as it’s relevant to my profession and Lucia’s drilled it into my head enough times. I learn slowly, but what I do learn I learn well, you know how it is.”

Lio wasn’t sure he did, but it was good that Galo did. He was a simple guy, but that made him easy to deal with. Easy to love. Lio liked that. He wouldn’t be able to handle someone as high strung as himself. He needed a rock to hold down his helium balloon.

Lio was used to being the center of his galaxy, but it wasn’t that he really wanted to be. He would have been more than happy being a little star on the far arm of it, dancing with its partner and a family of planets and moons, within a neighborhood of asteroids and comets.

“But did I feel anything? What do you mean?”

“Like...with the...resonance,” he articulated carefully. “It was...warm. You were...warm. That’s the first time I’ve felt it.”

“Warmth?” Galo gawked.

“Warmth,” Lio agreed. “Not burning, but warmth. Full body, all encompassing, and very _human_. It was...tender.” He eyed Galo.

This time, Galo flushed a little. He sputtered, but nothing came out.

“Even in your exuberance, you were kind,” he noted. “I liked that.”

As he watched, something strange happened. He heard it, first: the ringing of the Promare coming to life like any other person’s ears would ring. Then he felt it: the resonance, thrumming like a long note on a Cello. And then—

Heat. A little, _tiny_ burst of heat, flickering alive in Galo’s chest.

Lio smiled. _Oh, there you are._

Galo slapped a hand over his chest. Whether he’d noticed it or not, Lio wasn’t quite sure, but he’d certainly _felt_ it, that much was clear.

 _So you_ did _feel it, back then._ _Good. Even if it’s just the ember I lent you to protect you._

It wouldn’t have stayed alight if they weren’t at least somewhat compatible.

“Would you...go on a date with me?” Lio asked, rubbing at his neck. “I’ll try not to go supernova again.”

“Well it worked out, right, um...but yes, and yes, that’s probably good, what was the question? A date? Like a real, real date? _After_ I jacked you off? Aw...you didn’t buy me dinner first...”

“Hey, I saved the _world_ with you,” Lio shot back, pointing a finger. “And we’ve have dinners together since. And what you just did was fucking service to the country.” He chuckled. “Also, you know I have no money.”

“Hmm,” Galo noted, a bit troubled. “A scrub.”

“A refugee,” Lio corrected as he wrapped the towel around his waist and sat down on the room’s center bench. “Who is going to be the head plaintiff on the biggest litigation payout this city has ever seen, assuming he doesn’t get thrown in jail to hang for his crimes first.”

“You’re a real ray of sunshine,” Galo noted as he came down next to him, using a second towel to dry his hair. “You always like this after sex?”

“Technically I’m a black hole so you’re lucky you get anything but x-rays and quasars outta me.”

“A what? Is that like...a science-sex joke?”

“Oh, sorry, it’s a Burnish thing,” he offered. “Um...”

He paused, gazing around. At the tile that was no longer shining rainbow; at the ceiling, with its new chandeliers he dearly hoped no one would notice. Finally, his eyes settled on Galo, and the loveable hero of the day tilted his head. “Hm?”

Lio smiled. He was a sweet thing. He set a kiss on Galo’s meaty shoulder and said ,“Here, I want to do something. If you’ll allow.”

“S-sure. What is it?”

Lio hiked up his towel and bent down to his knees in front of Galo. Galo huffed a deep breath through his nose quickly and tilted his head back.

Lio let that hang a second. When Galo looked down, Lio was looking up at him with a wicked grin. He chuckled. Galo looked scandalized.

“You...! You waited just to catch me looking, didn’t you!”

“You like it,” Lio chided fondly, “admit it.”

“No way!”

Lio laid a hand over Galo’s chest. “You like it,” he said, a little more firmly. “Admit it.”

A small thrum went Galo, hitting his mind’s eye like a ring of water in a pond.

“N-No I don’t,” he muttered, half-heartedly and blinking the image away. “What was that?”

Lio closed his eyes and whatever it was happened again. The man’s thin hand glowed and turned mildly see-through, as if someone was shining a flashlight through it. A swell of energy in Galo’s chest gently flared to life. He closed his eyes and hummed.

“Oh, that’s nice,” he said. “Real warm.”

He pressed a hand over Lio’s. Reveled in the warmth of skin-to-skin contact that didn’t have sparks attached to it.

“You _like_ it?” Lio purred. And then, in a weirdly forceful tone, “ _Admit it_.”

“I just said I did, duh,” Galo shot back. “What in the world are you doing exactly? Trying to give me Burnish powers? I’m flattered, but I don’t think that’d be a real great choice given I’m a fire fighter...”

Lio’s eyes opened, and he sat on his heels, blinking for a bit in thought. But, apparently satisfied, he shrugged and got up. “Oh I dunno, you could make yourself fireproof armor. Some Burnish can even suck heat and flames back into themselves. I’d think it’d be real handy...unless you resonated with the flames so much you caused them to backdraft. I don’t think you would though, you don’t actually _like_ flame, right? I don’t, but there’s this woman named Stick, she runs Red Giant and God she’s a fucking _pyro_ , always giving me trouble back home, she’s one of the powerful Local Cluster leaders—”

Galo, sweet thing that he was, gently touched Lio’s elbow as he started to ramble and redirected his attention. “Hey.”

“Yeah?” Lio glanced down at him.

“Glad you’re feeling better.”

Lio would not have said he had a particularly frigid heart, but he felt something melting in his chest that he didn’t know had been frozen solid. Just being gazed at intently, caringly, by someone who wanted something other than to harm him, or need guidance from him—it had been so long. Maybe ever. His mother had loved him, but she’d died a long time ago. His father...well, he’d rather not talk about him.

So this...this was new. And it was graceful.

A breath hitched in his throat, as he gazed over the smooth skin of Galo Thymos’s chiseled face. At the tender heart and all its hopes being offered up to him in those beautiful blue eyes.

Those eyes, of a man who had been through pain and lived to tell the stories with boisterous happiness filling his days.

He wanted that. He wanted that so _badly_ , but somehow, he’d forgotten it for all the fighting and rage—and what it actually felt like. Perhaps he’d never known.

Lio’s eyebrows ticked up in a telltale wave of heat, and he quickly turned away, wiping at his eyes. Held his mouth behind his hand as he looked back down at Galo, as if that would keep the emotion from escaping.

“What is it?”

“Thank you,” he muttered eventually, lifting his hand for just long enough to say it.

Galo frowned. “This isn’t for the hand job, is it?”

“No, sweet blue star, it’s not.” Lio leaned down and, both hands around the crown of Galo’s head, laid a tender kiss on his forehead.

Galo held him by the hips, patient and steady as Lio stood between his legs.

“Let’s do this again sometime, eh?” he said softly. “Just...without the imminent fiery death.”

Lio laughed and, hand on Galo’s shoulder, sighed. “I’ll do my best. Hopefully it’s a one-off thing. Promare tend to be...kind of like that, the first time you kick into a new gear. Hormones fuck them up, basically. They don’t know how to map them and get all agitated.”

Galo sighed and buried his face in Lio’s abs, pushing his palms flat up his back with a deep breath. “God, you’re impressive. I can’t believe you like me.”

Lio’s thin hand carded through his hair. “You are damn impressive too. Young, but stellar.”

He paused a second, then chuckled at his own inadvertent joke. “But thank you. I _am_ the Prime of my cluster, after all.”

“What’s that mean?” Galo asked.

“For a regular human?” Lio asked. “Not much it would seem.” He took Galo’s face in his hands and kissed him once, then again. “Kissing you is so fun.”

_You always seem to pass my tests, even when you don’t know about them. Imagine such a burning flame existed._

Galo closed his eyes as Lio laid two tender kisses over his eyelids. When he looked up, his big blue eyes flickered over lavender ones. “If you had asked me three weeks ago if I thought I was going to be sleeping with the leader of Mad Burnish, I would have punched the person who said that to me.”

A smile quirked at Lio’s lips. “If you had told me three weeks ago that I would be in a BR station shower room getting jerked off by the hero of the city with my powers going out of control, I would have asked you why that was my punishment for my mission going pear-shaped, but you know what, it worked out, because he’s just as hot and kind as I would have hoped.” Lio winked at him and ruffled his hair into a mess. “But we haven’t _slept_ together yet.”

Lio yawned, and Galo got to his feet, finger-combing his hair to one side. “We should probably tell everyone everything’s all right now,” Galo stated.

“Yeah,” Lio noted. “Just tell them you cold-showered me by whatever means necessary, thus the screaming.”

“I’ll just tell them porcelain’s endothermic and you hated it the _whole_ time.” 

Lio gave him a friendly whack on the back. “Deal. And hey...?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

They faced each other, each one thinking their own thoughts as they did so. The tension grew, and grew, until finally it ripped apart and Lio sent a little flare of emotion out to him: Not a thrumming, not a wave, nor a vision, but just a full-body hug. He wrapped his arms around Galo’s thick neck and, rising onto the balls of his feet, squeezed him tight. Galo was quick to hold him back, their freshly-clean skin sticking together. Lio was no more than a little warmer than a normal human, and Galo pressed a kiss into the base of his neck.

“I’m glad you came into my orbit,” Lio whispered into his ear. “It’s nice to be just human sometimes.”

Stars burned their fuel. Some exploded after eons and recondensed into smaller, cooler stars, forming two systems of planets with their death and rebirth, until they eventually went dark after billions of years.

Some stars exploded and turned into gas clouds, to be captured and used for the next generation of stars to aggregate elsewhere.

Yet even others still condensed so far down that they collapsed into a singularity, lasting eternal.

Those black stars existed forever in the dark, detectable only by the absence of the stars they eclipsed, the way they moved things around them, and the light they bent as it glanced by them— unless other celestial bodies came too near and offered fuel to their fire.

This could rip the bright stars apart as it devoured them, and sometimes a black hole devoured so much that it could create its own solar system in a stable accretion disk around itself. Other times, it ejected so many X-rays that it glowed bright from the poles and destroyed everything in existence for hundreds of thousands of light years around it.

But sometimes. Just sometimes—if enough of those black holes combined after years and years of twirling around each other ever faster, they became the Prime star, swirling an entire galaxy around them with their massive singularity.

Lio could feel that tug, drawing him inexorably inward. He had someone to orbit with him now, in a long-lasting binary dance. He was not yet sure what kind of star Galo would become, but he was happy with it either way. They would burn together through material existence either way.

And if by chance he became another Burnish influence, Lio knew it would be one of great power.

In Burnish culture, it was customary to take a fiery name when one was brought into the group as a full citizen. When people paired up into their orbital patterns, it was also typical to make acronyms of their names, as it was often easier to find them through the Promare’s communal consciousness web by seeking out the brightness of the system they made.

He didn’t know what had drawn them together, but he had a feeling this pairing might make a stable orbit.

And so long as it did, he knew what their address would be on that star map:

The star of Glio Prime.


End file.
